Study says older people in the world are genetically superior

You can already check here in Mega Curioso the cases of people who have reached incredible ages, such as a 126 year old Ceará or the Chinese who claims to be 127! What will be the secret of their longevity? According to new research, this long life is not due to proper nutrition, exercise or a peaceful lifestyle, but to superior genes.

According to Discovery News Jennifer Viegas, researchers have sequenced the genome of “supercentennial” people, who are over 110 years old.

After the evaluations, they concluded that these individuals have enriched genes that promote longevity. However, in any case, they asserted that the main component of these people's “fountain of youth” still remains undefined.

Does lifestyle count?

Ceará Jose Aguinelo dos Santos, born in 1888

Well, according to research, the lifestyle led by the long-lived has hardly interfered with the wide range of their age. "Lifestyle choices in terms of smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise or diet do not appear to differ between centenarians and control participants, " wrote researcher Hinco Gierman in PLOS One magazine, where the study was published.

It is important to clarify that the so-called “control” participants refer to younger people who served for comparisons.

And if you look at it, many of those centenarians we see in the news say they smoke or still drink, and they also enjoy greasy food, although everyone says they do it in moderation - except the 126-year-old Ceará, who says that Smokes a pack of cigarettes a day.

Research Process

According to Discovery News, Hinco Gierman of Stanford University's Department of Developmental Biology and Genetics and his team limited most of their analysis to 13 genomes of Caucasian women, just to avoid other major differences that might exist between the two. various genomes.

With the assessments, researchers suspect that people over the age of 110 could be "enriched by a rare protein-altering variant" and confer extreme longevity. One possibility for this effect is a gene called TSHZ3, which has shown the greatest alteration. in the enrichment of protein variants.

“We pursued this gene further in a study consisting of 99 genomes of individuals aged 98 to 105 years old. We found that TSHZ3 carried the variant protein change more in those who lived for a longer time than in the control group, "said the researcher.

However, according to the researchers, the effect was not incredibly strong. Instead, they say they suspect that several genes somehow get into the process.

More results

Another interesting result of the study was that one of the supercentenarians had a genetic variant associated with a very poor heart condition. Some people with this pathogenic change have suffered sudden cardiac death. But clearly this did not happen to this woman, who reached a very mature age.

In addition, another finding was that the risk of cancer also seems to be decreased for supercentenarians. This is great news for older women, as there is a reported 19% incidence of cancer in the world's oldest people, compared with 49% of the normal population.