\n<\/p>\n
The nonagenarian actor Dame Joan Collins may have been on to something when she declared \u201cage is just a number\u201d.<\/p>\n
The deepest dive yet into the biology of a supercentenarian has revealed that even extreme old age can be reached without the brain necessarily faltering or the usual illnesses mounting up.<\/p>\n
Doctors in Spain conducted a comprehensive suite of tests on Maria Branyas Morera, who was the world\u2019s oldest person before she died at 117 years old last year.<\/p>\n
They discovered that while her body showed clear signs of extreme old age, a number of biological factors protected her from the diseases that normally plague the final years of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe common rule is that as we age we become sicker, but she was an exception and we wanted to understand why,\u201d said Dr Manel Esteller at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona. \u201cFor the first time, we\u2019ve been able to separate being old from being sick.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the years before she died, Branyas invited doctors to study her to learn why she had reached such a ripe old age. Born in San Francisco in 1907, Branyas moved to Catalonia in 1915 and survived two world wars, the Spanish civil war and the Covid pandemic, recovering from the virus aged 113.<\/p>\n
Esteller and his colleagues drew on blood, saliva, urine and stool samples collected a year before Branyas\u2019s death to build a detailed picture of her biology. The tests delved into her genetics and the extent to which different genes were switched on and off; the varieties and levels of proteins in her blood, the breakdown products from reactions in her body and the diversity of microbes in her gut.<\/p>\n
Among a trove of discoveries, they found that protective caps called telomeres on the ends of Branyas\u2019s chromosomes were exceptionally short, a clear sign of old age in her cells. Her immune system also showed signs of old age, was prone to inflammation, and she had acquired mutations that lead to leukaemia.<\/p>\n
But Branyas was seemingly well protected. Telomeres shorten whenever cells divide, and hers were so short they may have protected her from cancer by limiting the amount that cells continued to divide, Esteller said.<\/p>\n
A close look at her DNA revealed gene variants that protected her heart and brain cells from disease and dementia. She had low levels of inflammation throughout her body, which reduced her risk of cancer and diabetes, and efficient cholesterol and fat metabolism. \u201cThese are all critical because they\u2019re linked to diseases that are typical in older people and they kill you at the end,\u201d Esteller said.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Headlines Europe<\/span><\/p>\n A digest of the morning’s main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The team then turned to epigenetic clocks, which look at patterns of gene expression, to assess Branyas\u2019s biological age. \u201cShe was at least 10 to 15 years younger [than her chronological age],\u201d Esteller said. Her gut microbiome was also very young for her age with plenty of Bifidobacterium, which is also considered beneficial to health.<\/p>\n Her long life was not all down to genetics, however. Branyas was not overweight, ate a lot of yoghurt, and did not smoke or drink. She had a good social life with friends and family nearby. All surely helped, Esteller said.<\/p>\n He hopes the wealth of information will help scientists develop new treatments to keep people healthy in old age. \u201cWe can develop drugs to reproduce the effects of good genes,\u201d he said. \u201cMaria\u2019s parents gave her very good genes, but we cannot choose our parents.\u201d<\/p>\n Prof Jo\u00e3o Pedro de Magalh\u00e3es at the University of Birmingham, said: \u201cThese outliers in longevity could provide insights into how to age more gracefully. If we could figure out which specific genes are associated with extreme human longevity and healthy old age it could provide clues about mechanisms for ageing as well as drugable targets to develop interventions that allow everyone to live longer, healthier lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The nonagenarian actor Dame Joan Collins may have been on to something when she declared \u201cage is just a number\u201d. The deepest dive yet into the biology of a supercentenarian has revealed that even extreme old age can be reached without the brain necessarily faltering or the usual illnesses mounting up. Doctors in Spain conducted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2822,4754,2021,8328,384,5686,14383],"class_list":{"0":"post-23574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-age","9":"tag-ageing","10":"tag-healthy","11":"tag-insight","12":"tag-scientists","13":"tag-secrets","14":"tag-supercentenarian"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}