Health and Medicine
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The oldest woman in the world. The oldest man in the world. One of the oldest families in the world. Some of the hardiest and healthiest supercentenarians, and the richest genetic diversity on the planet. Who can claim to have held all these accolades at one time or another? Brazil, that’s who.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.We are mainly interested in finding the genetic factors responsible for extreme longevity. In this regard, supercentenarians (older than 110) and families with several centenarians are of great interest.
Dr Mayana Zatz
A new longitudinal study that looked at 160 supercentenarians – people living to over 110 – has uncovered the remarkable longevity exhibited among Brazil’s residents. Not only are they living longer but stronger, too, as some were able to overcome COVID-19 even before vaccines were available. Something a lot of people much younger didn’t survive.
“I find all these observations fascinating,” said author Dr Mayana Zatz at the Human Genome and Stem Cell Research Center, University of São Paulo, to IFLScience. “At the moment we are mainly interested in finding the genetic factors responsible for extreme longevity. In this regard, supercentenarians (older than 110) and families with several centenarians are of great interest.”
So, why should Brazil see such incredible, statistic-defying longevity? According to the authors, it lies in the country’s history.
Portuguese colonizers arrived in Brazil from 1500, and in the 17th and 19th centuries around 4 million enslaved Africans were brought to the country, mainly from West Africa. From the 19th and 20th centuries, millions of European immigrants arrived, mostly from Italy, Germany, and Portugal. And 1908 saw the beginning of a significant wave of Japanese immigration, starting what would become the largest Japanese community outside of Japan.
“This complex tapestry of ancestries has resulted in a highly admixed population,” write the study authors, “with unique genomic patterns that may influence multifactorial traits such as biological resilience and longevity.”
Previous research into a cohort of 1,000 Brazilians over 60 revealed 2 million novel genetic variants, demonstrating why Brazil remains one of the most valuable and underutilized resources for understanding human longevity. It’s hoped that insights gleaned from the genetic underpinnings of supercentenarians that are living healthier for longer could inform precision medicine approaches, and we already have examples as to how.
“We identified in three female volunteers a mutation known as responsible for inherited breast cancer (BRCA1),” said Zatz. “However these three women, who were in their nineties, never developed breast cancer.”
“Now, imagine if we find this same mutation in a young woman. Genetic counseling can be completely different and risk estimates should rely on healthy centenarians. We have also reclassified other variants of unknown significance in healthy centenarians which suggest that they are probably non-pathogenic.”
The authors are calling on the international community to expand recruitment in longevity and genomics research to include ancestrally diverse and admixed populations, such as Brazil.
The viewpoint paper is published in Genomic Psychiatry.
