Humans age just like apes: study

BEIJING. March 11. KAZINFORM Humans have more in common with our primate relatives than we think: we have concerning the aging patterns, said an article in Friday's issue of Science. Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

For a long time we thought that humans aged more slowly than other animals, with our access to modern medicine and early researches studying creatures from mice to fruit flies long confirmed the hunch.

But the first-ever multi-species comparison of human aging patterns with those in chimps, gorillas, and other primates suggests the pace of human aging may not be so unique after all.

The basic pattern is a relatively high risk of dying in infancy, a low risk of death during the juvenile years and then an increased risk of dying as aging progressed.

Also, the team led by Anne Bronikowski of Iowa State University found that in most cases males don't live as long as females.

The research team studied data on primate aging collected over decades around the world and compared it with statistics on modern Americans. Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.xinhuanet.com for full version