Becoming a centenarian is a big deal. It vaults you into a select group that few reach.
Just imagine: If you were born in 1926 and were celebrating your 100th birthday this year, you would have lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and the Space Race.
You would have seen the Berlin Wall come down, the birth of what we used to call the World Wide Web, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the global financial crisis in 2008 and COVID-19. This summer, you would celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States.
New research finds that while all that living may have taken its toll in many ways, it’s likely left your blood as perky as that of a healthy 40-year-old.
A team of Swiss scientists found blood samples from centenarians and compared them with the molecular profiles of hospitalized elderly patients with an average age of 86 and a group of healthy adults with an average age of 41.
The found 37 proteins in blood samples of those who reached 100, which they call “youth-associated proteins.” They believe the presence of these proteins might explain why some of us age so much more gracefully than others.
The centenarians also had lower levels of key inflammation markers than the hospitalized group in their 80s.
The findings are merely observational, so researchers point out that they don’t prove the proteins cause long life or that targeting them in any way might extend life.
Whether these youthful proteins are ever able to guide scientists to therapies that would help the general population age more comfortably is so far not known. But scientists at least now have a target to aim for.