A New Study Inched Closer to Discovering the Antidote for Death
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A new study out of Sweden investigated the blood of centenarians to understand what biomarkers indicate the potential for longer life.
A group of biomarkers were noted for their differences across the 100-year-olds, largely associated with lower levels of sugar and a healthy liver and kidney.
The researchers found that “centenarians overall displayed rather homogenous biomarker profiles.”
The biomarkers don’t lie, and now we have a little more science that could show us how to live longer.
A team of researchers from Sweden studied blood—specifically, the biomarkers in the blood—from 44,000 individuals over the age of 64, including about 1,200 people who were at least 100 years old. The study, published in GeroScience, examined the largest dataset of individuals to date in order to be able to contrast the long-lived against their shorter-lived peers.
They found discrepancies.
“The differences in biomarker values between centenarians and non-centenarians more than one decade prior to death suggest that genetic and/or possibly modifiable lifestyle factors reflected in these biomarker levels may play an important role for exceptional longevity,” the authors wrote.
Karin Modig, associate professor of epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet, wrote about the team’s conclusions in The Conversation. She noted a key finding—that people reaching their 100th birthday tended to have lower levels of glucose, creatinine, and uric acid from their 60s onward. And, uniquely enough, “centenarians overall displayed rather homogenous biomarker profiles” without extremely high or low values.
In short, limit the sugar and take care of your liver and kidneys. The older you get, the more important this advice may become.
“Higher levels of total cholesterol and iron and lower levels of glucose, gamma-glutamyl transferase, alkaline phosphatase, lactate dehydrogenase, and total iron-binding capacity were associated with reaching 100 years,” the authors wrote.
Modig said that while the team didn’t draw any conclusions about lifestyle factors or genes responsible for the biomarker values, it is “reasonable to think that factors such as nutrition and alcohol intake play a role.” She suggested watching kidney and liver health, as well as glucose and uric acid levels.
The research included data from 44,000 Swedes who underwent health assessments between the ages of 64 and 99. They were then followed for up to 35 years, with 1,224 of them hitting 100 years old. Of note, 85 percent of the people who reached centenarian status were female. Modig wrote that the team studied 12 blood-based biomarkers related to inflammation, metabolism, liver and kidney function, and malnutrition and anemia—all associated with aging or mortality in previous studies. Of those 12, the team believes 10 of them show a connection to the likelihood of turning 100.
Overall, those who celebrated a 100th birthday had lower levels of glucose, creatinine, and uric acid from their 60s onward. Modig wrote that both centenarians and non-centenarians had values outside the range considered normal in clinical guidelines, likely because those guides are set on a younger and healthier population.
“Even if the differences we discovered were overall rather small,” Modig wrote, “they suggest a potential link between metabolic health, nutrition, and exceptional longevity.”
Modig acknowledged that “chance probably plays a role at some point in reaching an exceptional age,” but with observed differences in biomarkers, there’s a likelihood that genes and lifestyle are also significant.
Long live biomarkers.
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