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Study: Centenarians have unique immune systems resilient to disease

Researchers that found that centenarians have distinct cells in their immune system that allow for their bodies to adapt more successfully to sickness and disease. Photo by Pixabay
Researchers that found that centenarians have distinct cells in their immune system that allow for their bodies to adapt more successfully to sickness and disease. Photo by Pixabay

March 31 (UPI) -- A team of U.S. scientists said Friday that a study of the immune systems for those rare individuals that reach 100 years or more showed they are remarkably resilient to disease.

Researchers at Boston University and the Tufts Medical Center, in a study published in The Lancet, found that centenarians have distinct cells in their immune system that allow for their bodies to adapt more successfully to sickness and disease.

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"Our data support the hypothesis that centenarians have protective factors that enable to recover from disease and reach extreme old ages," lead author Tanya Karagiannis from Tufts said.

María Branyas Morera of Spain is the oldest person alive at 115 years after the death of 118 year-old Lucile Randon, a French nun known otherwise as Sister Andre. From a Twitter profile that she runs with the help of a daughter, Morera said longevity is about peace and tranquility.

"I think longevity is also about being lucky," she wrote. "Luck and good genetics."

On genetics, she may be right. Researchers performed single-cell sequencing on a type of immune cell in the blood and found many markers are unique to people like Morera.

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"The immune profiles that we observed in the centenarians confirms a long history of exposure to infections and capacity to recover from them and provide support to the hypothesis that centenarians are enriched for protective factors that increase their ability to recover from infections," senior author Paola Sebastiani at the Tufts Medical Center said.

The study is called "Multi-modal profiling of peripheral blood cells across the human lifespan reveals distinct immune cell signatures of aging and longevity."

"Collectively, these data suggest that centenarians harbor unique, highly functional immune systems that have successfully adapted to a history of insults, allowing for the achievement of exceptional longevity," the study says.

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