Humans have the longest post-reproductive lifespans and lowest rates of actuarial ageing among primates. Understanding the links between slow actuarial ageing and physiological change is critical for improving the human ‘healthspan’. Physiological dysregulation may be a key feature of ageing in industrialized populations with high burdens of chronic ‘diseases of civilization’, but little is known about age trajectories of physiological condition in subsistence populations with limited access to public health infrastructure. To better characterize human physiological dysregulation, we examined age trajectories of 40 biomarkers spanning the immune (n = 13 biomarkers), cardiometabolic (n = 14), musculoskeletal (n = 6) and other (n = 7) systems among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon using mixed cross-sectional and longitudinal data (n = 22 115 observations). We characterized age-related changes using a multi-system statistical index of physiological dysregulation (Mahalanobis distance; D_m) that increases with age in both humans and other primates. Although individual biomarkers showed varied age profiles, we found a robust increase in age-related dysregulation for Tsimane (β = 0.17–0.18) that was marginally faster than that reported for an industrialized Western sample (β = 0.14–0.16), but slower than that of other non-human primates. We found minimal sex differences in the pace or average level of dysregulation for Tsimane. Our findings highlight some conserved patterns of physiological dysregulation in humans, consistent with the notion that somatic ageing exhibits species-typical patterns, despite cross-cultural variation in environmental exposures, lifestyles and mortality.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution of the primate ageing process'.

在灵长类动物中，人类的生殖后寿命最长，精算衰老率最低。了解精算缓慢衰老与生理变化之间的联系对于延长人类“健康寿命”至关重要。生理失调可能是慢性“文明病”负担沉重的工业化人口老龄化的一个关键特征，但人们对公共卫生基础设施有限的自给人口的生理状况年龄轨迹知之甚少。为了更好地表征人类生理失调，我们检查了 Tsimane 采集者园艺师中 40 种生物标志物的年龄轨迹，涵盖免疫（ n = 13 生物标志物）、心脏代谢（ n = 14）、肌肉骨骼（ n = 6）和其他（ n = 7）系统使用混合横截面和纵向数据（ n = 22 115 个观测值）对玻利维亚亚马逊地区进行了研究。我们使用生理失调的多系统统计指数（马哈拉诺比斯距离； D _m ）来描述与年龄相关的变化，该指数在人类和其他灵长类动物中都随着年龄的增长而增加。尽管个体生物标志物显示出不同的年龄特征，但我们发现 Tsimane 与年龄相关的失调急剧增加（ β = 0.17-0.18），略快于工业化西方样本的报告（ β = 0.14-0.16），但慢于工业化西方样本的报告。其他非人类灵长类动物的情况。我们发现 Tsimane 的失调速度或平均水平存在最小的性别差异。 我们的研究结果强调了人类生理失调的一些保守模式，这与躯体衰老表现出物种典型模式的观点一致，尽管环境暴露、生活方式和死亡率存在跨文化差异。

本文是主题“灵长类动物衰老过程的进化”的一部分。