According to the Guinness World Records, the oldest person to ever live was Jeanne Calment, who reached 122 years, 164 days old before her death in 1997. The mere fact that this record has not been broken has prompted many researchers to see 122 years as the limit of human longevity. But new research proposes that the human lifespan could be longer than previously thought by a considerable amount.
A new paper by Russian researchers Evgeniy Efimov, Vlad Fedotov, and Leonid Malaev, published in the journal npj Aging, suggests that, in theory, humans could live up to 156 years. This comes from a multistage mathematical model that allowed the researchers to sequentially “switch on” different aging mechanisms, assessing how long a person could live in an abstract scenario where mortality risk never increased with age. They experimented with various conditions, discovering the biggest drop was caused by somatic mutations and the vulnerability of non-renewing tissues.
These somatic mutations are changes in the DNA of a body cell, affecting the body’s tissues. They accumulate over our lifetimes, cannot be reversed with any existing therapy, and occur due to environmental factors and errors in DNA replication. While some organs, like the liver and the skin, boast continuous cell turnover, allowing them to regrow damaged portions, there are two key tissues that can’t regenerate their cells, the brain (neurons) and the heart (cardiomyocytes).
“The key finding of the study is the discovery of substantial differences between tissue types. Neurons and cardiomyocytes, which lack the ability to divide, turned out to be the main limiting factors: when all other causes of aging are eliminated, somatic mutations alone reduce the theoretical median lifespan from 1,759 years (for a hypothetical non-aging human organism) to 156 years,” says Efimov. “At the same time, tissues with high regenerative capacity—such as the liver—can maintain their function for thousands of years through continuous cell renewal, effectively neutralizing the negative impact of mutations.”
While this is merely a mathematical experiment and we may not be seeing someone reach their 156th birthday anytime soon, the researchers’ findings shine a light on which aging mechanisms shorten life the most. In turn, it signals which issues demand more attention from the realm of health and science. For now, the team also hopes to incorporate other signs of aging to their model, such as mitochondrial dysfunction, loss of proteostasis, telomere shortening, and epigenetic changes, as well as extending it to other tissues and species to enable additional cross-testing.
Sources: Somatic mutations impose an entropic upper bound on human lifespan; New Research Reveals How Humans Could Live Up to 156 Years; Oldest person ever
Related Articles:
Scientists at Stanford Find a Way To Regrow Aging Knee Cartilage and Prevent Arthritis
Study Finds Coffee Consumption Linked To Healthy Aging in Women
100-Year-Old Sir David Attenborough’s Dietary Recommendation for Longevity of Life
New Study Suggests Psilocybin May Significantly Improve Symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease
