Scientists studying the unusually high number of supercentenarians in Brazil – people who live well past the age of 100 – have discovered something remarkable about how their “boosted” immune systems keep them healthy even into their advanced years.
Brazil has a disproportionately high concentration of people living to be over 110 years old, making the country a unique terrain for longevity studies.
According to experts, these individuals appear to have immune systems specifically adapted for longevity — systems that renew and recycle cells at a rate typical of much younger people. This process helps prevent the accumulation of damaged proteins and dangerous mutations that drive age-related diseases such as heart disease, cancer and dementia.
Researchers from the University of São Paulo say that Brazil's long history of early colonization, dating back to the 1500s, has created some of the richest genetic diversity in the world - a factor that may explain why so many people live to such advanced ages.
To investigate this phenomenon, the team analyzed data from an ongoing study involving over 140 centenarians and 20 supercentenarians from different regions of South America's largest country.
Among them was Sister Inah, a Brazilian nun who was the world's oldest person until her death on April 30, 2025, at the age of 116. The study also included the former oldest male person in the world, who died at the age of 112, as well as his successor, currently 113.
According to the study's leader, Dr. Mayana Zatz, professor of human and medical genetics, the scientific importance of this group lies not only in how long they live, but in how well they live.
“If there is a ‘fountain of longevity’ anywhere,” she says, “it is most likely somewhere in Brazil.”
Most of the supercentenarians studied maintained mental clarity and were able to perform daily activities on their own, despite having had little or no access to modern healthcare.
Detailed analyses showed that their immune systems – the body’s first line of defense against infection – functioned very differently from those of the general population. Analysis at the cellular level showed that the immune cells retained highly efficient mechanisms for protein recycling and cellular “cleaning,” similar to those of much younger people. This helps the body eliminate potentially harmful mutations.
The researchers also found that CD4+ helper T cells, which normally coordinate the immune response, behaved more like CD8+ “killer” T cells – cells that directly attack infected or abnormal cells. This pattern is very rare in younger populations.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, research teams observed that these immune systems adapted quickly, producing neutralizing antibodies and boosting protective proteins involved in the early stages of fighting the virus. Three supercentenarians in the study survived Covid-19 infection in 2020, before vaccines were available.
Writing in the journal Genomic Press, the researchers concluded that immune system aging in supercentenarians should not be seen as an inevitable decline, but as a form of biological adaptation that preserves function.
This discovery also sheds new light on previous studies, which suggest that people who live to a very old age are not simply "surviving" diseases longer - but often avoid them early on.
Large studies in Sweden have shown that centenarians develop far fewer serious illnesses over their lifetime, accumulate health problems more slowly, and have a significantly lower risk of major age-related diseases, such as heart attacks, strokes, and dementia.
In an analysis that followed over 170 people for up to 40 years, those who later lived to be over 100 had much lower rates of cardiovascular disease even in their 80s, suggesting they were protected from disease long before they reached extreme old age.
Experts say immune adaptations discovered in Brazilian supercentenarians could explain this effect of so-called "super-agers," challenging the long-held belief that a longer life necessarily means more years in poor health.
Interestingly, unlike other long-lived populations, Brazilian supercentenarians do not follow a specific diet, such as the Mediterranean diet, which is often linked to heart health and longevity.
The team is now developing cell models to identify biological protective mechanisms that may be unique to the Brazilian population, with the long-term goal of understanding how healthy aging can be extended to the wider population. /GazetaExpress/
t7 live
