Absolute longest age humans could to live, according to new study
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock
While the likes of Bryan Johnson thinks that they're going to work out a way to 'live forever' by reversing the aging process, researchers have revealed what they believe to be the maximum age people can get to.
Johnson is just one of many so-called biohackers attempting to reverse their biological clock, and has gone to some extremes to try and achieve this (carrying out a 17-step morning routine, for example).
But Johnson's efforts to 'live forever' may be in vain as a group of scientists believe they may have worked out the human race's theoretical median lifespan.
A team from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia and co-authors from AIRI put their heads together to asses how somatic mutations limit the maximum human lifespan.
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These mutations are random changes to cells that happen over the course of person's life, occur in every tissue, and are not passed down to parents to their kids, Wellcome Sanger Institute explains. This type of mutation can damage cells, impair their function, and contribute to the development of age-related diseases such as cancer.
Long story short, it's somatic mutations that make a huge difference to how long we live.
Evgeny Efimov, one of the key authors of the study, explained in a Medical Xpress news release: "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."
Efimov added: "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 the likes of the liver and skin are constantly creating new cells, the same can't be said for other organs like the brain and heart.
The study's model of all critical organs ultimately found that when all other reversible signs of aging are completely eliminated, somatic mutations still limit the median human lifespan to a range of 146 to 194 years.
Admittedly this is dramatically less than 1,759 years, but it's still twice the current average life expectancy in developed countries – so it's not all doom and gloom.
But somatic mutations aren't solely to blame, says Dmitrii Kriukov, a research scientist at the Skoltech Biomed Technologies Center and a senior research scientist at AIRI.
"Our study shows that somatic mutations contribute significantly to aging, but they cannot by themselves explain the observed mortality," he explained.
"This means that other aging mechanisms—such as loss of proteostasis, mitochondrial dysfunction or epigenetic changes—contribute comparably to limiting lifespan."