(Press-News.org) Increases in life expectancy in the UK and elsewhere had slowed even before 2016 - and COVID-19 is expected to further eliminate any gains, Newcastle University studies show.
After 2011, over the post-financial crisis period the authors find that the UK performed poorly, in almost all measures, compared to the 28 countries of the European Union (EU28).
Life expectancy at birth, and age 65, in the UK were increasing rapidly in 2008 but slowed around 2011 and Germany, Portugal and France showed evidence of a similar slowing.
Furthermore, years of good health, called Healthy Life Years, at birth in the UK decreased, whereas it increased in most EU28 countries. The UK experienced a period of absolute expansion of unhealthy life in both older men and women.
The authors, led by Dr Claire Welsh at Newcastle University, suggest the reasons for the decline may include cuts to public spending on health and social care under austerity, increasing mortality rates from seasonal influenza combined with more frequent extremes of temperature, a larger proportion of the population in the 'susceptible' group of older, frail people, and a higher mortality rate amongst the working age population.
Dr Welsh explains: "Given that other countries in the EU have already achieved higher life expectancy than the UK, it seems unlikely that the deceleration in the UK is due to being close to any natural maximum lifespan of human beings. This suggests that our health and social care system was under strain even before the effects of COVID-19."
Slowing life expectancy in UK
In 2008, life expectancy at birth was highest for French women (84.8 years) and Swedish men (79.2 years). The countries with the lowest life expectancy at birth were Lithuania and Bulgaria (for men, 65.9 years and women, 77.0 years, respectively).
By 2016, the highest life expectancy for men was recorded in Italy (81.0 years) and for women, in Spain (86.3 years) and the lowest in Lithuania and Bulgaria (for men 69.1 years, and women 78.5 years, respectively).
Life expectancy at birth in the UK in 2008 was the seventeenth highest in women (81.8 years) and tenth highest in men (77.7 years) and the UK remained tenth and seventeenth highest for life expectancy at birth in 2016 in men (79.4 years) and women (83.0 years), respectively. However, modelling suggested that life expectancy growth slowed significantly around 2011 for both UK men and women.
Modelling also suggested that the increase in UK men's life expectancy at age 65 slowed significantly around 2011. In 2008 the UK had the eighth highest life expectancy at age 65 for men (17.6 years), and the sixteenth highest for women (20.2 years), but by 2016 both had dropped down one place (women, seventeenth with 21.1 years, men to ninth with 18.8 years).
Another recently published study from Newcastle University using the Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies I and II found that inequalities in disability-free life expectancy between the most and least advantaged older people increased between 1991 and 2011. For the most advantaged men and women all the gains in life expectancy at age 65 between 1991 and 2011 were years free of disability. In contrast, the least advantaged women experienced little increase in life expectancy or disability-free life expectancy. COVID-19 is only expected to increase these gaps.
INFORMATION:
REFERENCES: Trends in life expectancy and healthy life years at birth and age 65 in the UK, 2008-2016, and other countries of the EU28: an observational cross-sectional study. Claire E. Welsh, Fiona E. Matthews, Carol Jagger. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2020.100023
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(20)30023-5/fulltext
Healthy ageing for all? Comparisons of socioeconomic inequalities in health expectancies over two decades in the Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies I and II. Holly Q Bennett, Andrew Kingston, Gemma Spiers, Louise Robinson, Lynne Corner, Clare Bambra, Carol Brayne, Fiona E Matthews, Carol Jagger. International Journal of Epidemiology.
DOI: doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyaa271
https://academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyaa271/6076702?guestAccessKey=3bd7e38f-777b-4718-8212-358eef6f8fb8
Using salt as a key ingredient, Chinese and British researchers have designed a new type of rechargeable battery that could accelerate the shift to greener, electric transport on our roads.
Many electric vehicles (EV) are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but they can lose energy and power over time. Under certain conditions, such batteries can also overheat while working or charging, which can also degrade battery life and reduce miles per charge.
To solve these issues, the University of Nottingham is collaborating with six scientific ...
The year 2020 played host to an uncharacteristically large number of natural disasters. The year began with large wildfires in the Amazon rainforest and Australia. A series of wildfires broke out in the American states of California during summer and Oregon in September 2020. In particular, the Oregon wildfire intensified to an uncontrollable extent and was spread over a wide area by strong gusts of wind that carried it forward. These unseasonably strong winds may have been stoked by an unexpected source: typhoons on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
In late August and early September, three storms--Bavi, Mayask, and Haishen--occurred just two weeks apart in the Korean peninsula, causing floods, mudslides, and several casualties. In a recently ...
T-cells are an important component of our immune system: with the receptors they carry on their surface, they can recognise highly specific antigens. Upon detection of an intruder, an immune response is triggered. It is still unclear exactly what happens when antigens are recognised: How many antigens are necessary to elicit an immune response, and does the response depend on their spatial arrangement?
These effects take place in the nanometer range - on the size scale of molecules, far below what can be seen with ordinary microscopes. To study all this, tiny tools are needed. Therefore, an unusual method was used at TU Wien: DNA molecules were folded in an ingenious way, similar to the paper folding ...
Students from lower socio-economic groups (SEG) are less likely to participate in sport or physical activity at university, research from Sheffield Hallam University has found.
The main barriers affecting participation were found to be down to cost of being part of a sports team, lack of time due to academic commitments, part-time working or their social life taking precedence and limited prior knowledge of and participation in sport before starting university.
Funded by British Universities and Colleges Sport and published in the peer-reviewed Sport, Education and Society journal, the study surveyed over 700 students from 20 universities and found those that had participated in sport and physical ...
A collaboration between the Pericàs group with Prof. Timothy Noël and Dr. Paola Riente at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, The Netherlands), has crystallised in a Nature Communications paper where they provide key insight into the chemical nature of the true photocatalyst involved in the Bi2O3-driven atom-transfer radical addition (ATRA) reaction.
Back in 2014, ICREA professors Miquel Pericàs and Emilio Palomares together with former postdoctoral researcher Dr. Riente published a paper on Angewandte Chemie International Edition pioneering the research on organic transformations in mild reactions conditions ...
The work of the research group under the guidance of Professor Leonid Martyushev (co-authors: Roman Bando and Evgenia Chervontseva) will help to predict the behavior of fluids in various environments.
"When oil wells are depleted, water is pumped there under pressure to force the residual oil to the surface. If the interface between water and oil were an even layer, then it would be safe to say that as a result of water injection we recover all the residual oil. But since the interface between the two liquids is a highly distorted section, oil, contrary to expectations, can still remain underground, while water comes out to the surface. This is where our calculations come in ...
The coronavirus crisis has led to some of the general public developing a critical view of the current food consumption model, as shown by a recent survey by the Catalan Consumer Agency, which reveals that 60.5% of all Catalans tend to think that the pandemic will promote more responsible, sustainable and fair consumption. Moreover, the various lockdowns have caused a significant increase in online shopping throughout Spain, with a 92% rise in volume and a 114.5% rise in value, according to aggregated consumption data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This change in shopping habits and the awareness of the food model may also ...
The human body strives to keep itself in homeostasis, or balance. When blood clots are created, the body's innate response is to break the clots down to prevent significant health problems from arising.
Research has found that patients with COVID-19 are prone to serious blood clotting. This is why many patients receive high dose anticoagulants as part of their treatment.
But a new study in Scientific Reports, led by senior author Daniel Lawrence, Ph.D., a Professor of Basic Research in Cardiovascular Medicine at Michigan Medicine, found that aside ...
New research by Swansea University scientists found that boat ramps facilitate the dispersal of the highly invasive zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha).
To contain the dispersion of this invasive species Dr Marta Rodriguez-Rey and co-authors suggest in the new study, that strict control measures and target monitoring around boat ramps should be implemented.
Invasive bivalves are a problem as they can cause widespread environmental damage, and eradication has proved difficult. The zebra mussel is one of the most damaging invasive bivalves - it reproduces fast, disperses widely, and damages the economy. In Great Britain, £5 million are lost each year due to pipe fouling and damage to water infrastructures caused ...
Titanium dioxide nanoparticles decorated by gold absorb about 96% of the solar spectrum and turn it into heat. The material can accelerate the evaporation in desalination plants up to 2.5 times and can track hazardous molecules and compounds. An international research team with representatives from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), ITMO University, and the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a related article in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
Access to safe water is included in the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Children's Fund (UNICEF) addressed the problem in 2019 report, noting that 2.2 ...
