My research interests in a broad sense are: (1) to understand the mechanisms of aging and longevity, and (2) to find ways for extension of healthy and productive human lifespan.
 

Within this general idea in mind, and in collaboration with Dr. Natalia Gavrilova, I reanalyzed the existing approaches to the aging problem, and came to a number of specific research goals described in our book (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 1991) and our later publications (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 2001a; b).  These specific research goals are based on one general idea that deep insights into the nature of aging process could be obtained through innovative methods of quantitative analysis of lifespan and survival data (available from epidemiological, genealogical, and demographic studies).
 

One particularly interesting scientific idea, which we would like to elaborate further and to test, is that early developmental events are important for late-life health outcomes, including human longevity.  We came to this idea, while developing a new reliability theory of aging, which states that ‘normal’ organisms are born with enormous amount of initial damage (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 2001b).  Additional support for this idea came from our direct epidemiological findings that such early-life conditions as the paternal age at person’s conception (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 2000), the month of person’s birth (Gavrilov, Gavrilova, 1999), and the person’s birth order (Gavrilova et al., 2001) proved to be important predictors of human longevity.  We would like to launch a large-scale multidisciplinary Research Project on the role of early-life developmental events and conditions in human aging and longevity (including studies on animal models).
 

More information on our research interests, current work and research experience is available at our website: http://www.src.uchicago.edu/~gavr1/
 
 

Gavrilov L.A., Gavrilova N.S. (1991). The Biology of Life Span: A Quantitative Approach, NY: Harwood Academic Publisher, 385p.

Gavrilov, L.A., Gavrilova, N.S. (1999). Season of birth and human longevity. Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, 2(4): 365-366.

Gavrilov, L.A., Gavrilova, N.S. (2000) Human longevity and parental age at conception. In: J.-M.Robine et al. (eds.) Sex and Longevity: Sexuality, Gender, Reproduction, Parenthood, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 7-31.

Gavrilov L.A., Gavrilova N.S. (2001a). Epidemiology of human longevity: The search for appropriate methodology. Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, 4(1): 13-30.

Gavrilov L.A., Gavrilova N.S. (2001b). The reliability theory of aging and longevity. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 213(4): 527-545.

Gavrilova N.S., Gavrilov L.A., Evdokushkina G.N., Semyonova, V.G. (2001). Early-life predictors of human longevity. Paper presented at the 26th annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, November 15-18, 2001. Full text available at: http://www.src.uchicago.edu/~gavr1/Gavrilova-SSHA-2001.pdf