The chance of living to be 100 years old is not out of the question, but it’s certainly not guaranteed. Those who manage to celebrate their triple-numbered birthday are less susceptible to illness and chronic inflammation than those who don’t.
In research published in Nature, Kenya Honda, a microbiologist and immunologist at Keio University School of Medicine, and his colleagues showed that a clue to centenarians’ long lives may be in their guts. Microbes that produce unique bile acids in the intestines of 100-year-olds may keep inflammation and aging-related illness at bay.
“This was a unique study that allowed us to look at the microbiome at the extreme of aging,” said Ramnik Xavier, a gastroenterologist and molecular biologist at the Broad Institute and Harvard University, who authored the study with Honda. “Could we identify microbial features unique to centenarians and then use that to get to the biology?”
Individuals who ...
