There's no escaping the unrelenting passage of time, but supercentenarians who live to see their 110th birthday have a peculiar ability to postpone the inevitable.
A thorough health evaluation of one of the world's oldest people, Maria Branyas, suggests that one of the reasons she lived to 117 was that she possessed an exceptionally young genome.
Some of her rare genetic variants are linked to longevity, immune function, and a healthy heart and brain.
Related: Want to Live to 100? These Four Habits Might Help Get You There.
Scientists in Spain say they are now using these findings to "provide a fresh look at human aging biology, suggesting biomarkers for healthy aging, and potential strategies to increase life expectancy."
The results are based on blood, saliva, urine, and stool samples that Branyas volunteered before her passing in 2024, when she was the oldest living person in the world.
According to a team led by scientists at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Branyas had cells that "felt" or "behaved" as though they were much younger than her chronological age. She exceeded the average life expectancy of women in her home of Catalonia by more than 30 years.
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In her ripe old age, Branyas presented with overall good health, scientists say, marked by excellent cardiovascular health and very low levels of inflammation.
Despite her advanced years, her immune system and gut microbiome both had markers that matched much younger cohorts. She also displayed extremely low levels of 'bad' cholesterol and triglycerides, and very high levels of 'good' cholesterol.
All of these factors may help explain her excellent health and extreme longevity.
Branyas lived a mentally, socially, and physically active life, but she also lucked out on genetics. While eating a Mediterranean diet high in yogurt may have played a role in her lengthy life, extreme longevity is probably influenced by a wide range of genetic and environmental variables.
Interestingly, scientists noticed a "huge erosion" in Branyas' telomeres – the caps at the ends of her chromosomes.
Telomeres protect our genetic material, and shorter ones are linked to a higher risk of death. Recent studies, however, suggest that among the oldest of the old, telomeres are not actually a useful biomarker of aging.
In fact, having very short telomeres may have provided Branyas with an advantage. Hypothetically speaking, write the authors, the short lifespan of her body's cells may have stopped cancer from ever proliferating.
"The picture that emerges from our study, although derived only from this one exceptional individual, shows that extremely advanced age and poor health are not intrinsically linked," write the researchers, led by epigeneticists Eloy Santos-Pujol and Aleix Noguera-Castells.
Research on just one person, especially one as remarkable as Branyas, is limited in what it can reveal for the rest of us. Santos-Pujol, Noguera-Castells, and their colleagues in Spain acknowledge that larger cohorts are needed to extrapolate on their results.
But larger studies comparing exceptionally long-lived people to their shorter-lived peers have also found biomarkers that set some humans apart, including unique features that may help them resist disease.
Centenarians are the fastest-growing demographic in the world, but only 1 in 10 people who make it to 100 live to see the next decade. What Branyas has provided researchers is a rare opportunity to study the possible pathways that make an extreme human lifespan possible.
The study was published in Cell Reports Medicine.