A Viewpoint published today in Genomic Psychiatry by Dr Mayana Zatz and colleagues from the Human Genome and Stem Cell Research Center at the University of São Paulo explores why Brazil stands out as one of the world’s most promising yet underexplored settings for research into extreme human longevity. Drawing on the team’s long-running national study of exceptionally old individuals, the article situates Brazilian findings within the rapidly evolving field of supercentenarian biology, arguing that current models of ageing remain incomplete without greater ancestral diversity.
Why a small minority of humans live well beyond 110 years while most never reach 100 remains one of biomedicine’s most persistent puzzles. According to the authors, a central obstacle lies not in methodology but geography. The overwhelming majority of genomic datasets are drawn from relatively homogeneous populations, leaving admixed groups largely absent. This imbalance is particularly damaging in longevity research, where rare protective variants may be enriched in genetically diverse individuals yet remain invisible in standard reference populations.
Brazil’s population history provides a uniquely powerful counterpoint to this limitation. Centuries of admixture shaped by Indigenous ancestry, Portuguese colonisation, the forced migration of millions of enslaved Africans, and later European and Japanese immigration have produced extraordinary genomic diversity. Large-scale studies of older Brazilians have already revealed millions of previously undocumented genetic variants, including mobile element insertions and immune-related alleles missing from global databases, many of which may influence ageing, disease resistance, and resilience.
Against this backdrop, the research team has assembled an exceptional longitudinal cohort comprising more than 160 centenarians, including 20 validated supercentenarians from diverse regions and socioeconomic backgrounds. Several participants remained cognitively intact and functionally independent well into extreme old age, despite having lived most of their lives with limited access to modern healthcare. The cohort includes globally recognised longevity outliers, offering rare insight into survival mechanisms that appear to operate independently of sustained medical intervention.
Familial clustering within the cohort further strengthens the case for a genetic contribution to exceptional longevity. One family includes a 110-year-old woman alongside nieces aged 100, 104, and 106, reflecting patterns seen in earlier studies showing markedly increased longevity among siblings of centenarians. Such lineages provide a valuable opportunity to examine how polygenic inheritance and epigenetic regulation may interact to promote long-term physiological resilience.
The Viewpoint also synthesises emerging biological signatures of supercentenarians, highlighting preserved immune competence, efficient protein maintenance, and adaptive immune cell profiles more typical of younger individuals. These traits help explain striking observations such as survival from COVID-19 before vaccination in several cohort members. Collectively, the authors argue that supercentenarians exemplify not delayed decline but active resistance to ageing, and that Brazil’s unparalleled genetic landscape offers a critical opportunity to advance global understanding of healthy human longevity while addressing long-standing inequities in biomedical research.
More information: Mateus V. de Castro et al, Insights from Brazilian supercentenarians, Genomic Psychiatry. DOI: 10.61373/gp026v.0009
Journal information: Genomic Psychiatry Provided by Genomic Press
