lifespansentry

Lifespansentry is a data unit used in aging research to record the observed lifespan of an individual subject within a study. It functions as a standardized record intended for aggregation across experiments and laboratories to enable comparative analyses and meta-studies.

A lifespansentry typically includes key attributes such as subject_id, species, strain or genotype, sex, environmental conditions (diet, housing, temperature), start_age_days, end_age_days or status (deceased, censored), lifespan_days, and a notes field. Additional metadata may cover experiment_id, data_source, treatment details, and censoring_reason when applicable. The goal is to provide a consistent, machine-readable representation that supports interoperability and reproducibility.

In practice, lifespansentries are stored in structured databases or files (for example relational tables or JSON records) and are often harmonized using controlled vocabularies and compatible schemas. This enables researchers to perform cross-study comparisons, construct survivorship curves, and conduct meta-analyses with greater reliability. Adherence to data standards and documentation is important to address variability in experimental design, start points, and censoring practices.

The concept aligns with broader data-sharing and FAIR data principles in longevity research. While not universally formalized as a single official standard, lifespansentries appear in many open datasets and repositories that aim to catalog individual lifespan observations in a consistent, queryable form.

See also: survivorship curve, longevity research, lifespan database, data standardization.