As we age, we become increasingly likely to face cardiovascular diseases, cognitive decline, benign prostatic hyperplasia and other chronic diseases of aging (CDA). Research on the drivers of these diseases will be vital in the coming half century, over which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) projects that the elderly population (>65 years) in the USA will double to reach 98 million. Because humans lived as subsistence populations for 99% of our history (i.e. as hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists), examining the incidence of CDA in contemporary subsistence populations will contribute an essential evolutionary perspective to treatment and prevention initiatives. The long-held assumption that people in subsistence populations do not live long enough to experience CDA is based on the low life expectancy at birth of these populations (21–37 years). However, this metric is skewed by infant mortality, which is ∼35 times higher in subsistence populations than in industrialized ones. A better measure of longevity is the modal age of death for adults; across all subsistence populations, the modal age of death is between 68–78 years and 20–30% of people live past that age [1]. Many people in subsistence populations thus live long enough to experience CDA, but research summarizing patterns of these diseases within and across subsistence populations remains scant.

中文翻译：

---

进化背景下的慢性衰老疾病

随着年龄的增长，我们越来越有可能面临心血管疾病，认知能力下降，前列腺增生和其他慢性衰老疾病（CDA）。在接下来的半个世纪中，对这些疾病驱动因素的研究将至关重要。美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）预测，美国的老年人口（> 65岁）将翻一番，达到9800万人。由于人类在我们99％的历史中都是生存人口（即，作为狩猎者或园艺家），因此研究CDA在当代生存人口中的发生率将为治疗和预防计划提供重要的进化视角。人们长期以来一直认为生存人口的寿命不足以经历CDA，这是基于这些人口出生时的预期寿命短（21-37岁）。但是，这一指标受婴儿死亡率的影响，其生存率是工业化人口的35倍左右。更好的衡量长寿的方法是成年人的模态死亡年龄。在所有生存人口中，模态死亡年龄在68-78岁之间，而20-30％的人超过该年龄[1]。因此，生活在人口中的许多人的寿命足以体验CDA，但是对这些疾病在生活中和生活中的模式进行总结的研究仍然很少。