Practical methodology of evaluation of mortality curves and detection of aging-related interventions.

A practical and simple method of direct proof of occurrence of changes in the aging rate is suggested. The aging rate is defined here according to the pacemaker concept of the control of aging as the rate of pace of the inner aging clock. The principle of the method consists of the analysis of relationships between mortality curves. The methodology makes it possible to distinguish the changes in mortality caused by direct intervention in the basic mechanism of the control of aging processes (the pacemaker) from changes caused by intervention in other systems of an organism. As mortality curves are often difficult to obtain directly in experimental gerontology, a method of transformation of survival data into mortality curves is demonstrated. The general purpose of this study is to derive more information from experimental data and from demographic studies, and contribute to a more exact methodology of verification in gerontology.