Assessing the Brains of Supercentenarians

Supercentenarians, people who have passed 110 years of age, are very rare. Accordingly, the sort of information on their physiology that can only be obtained through autopsy or donation of the body to science is similarly thin on the ground. It has been some years now, for example, since the evidence was first gathered to show that most supercentenarians are probably killed by transthyretin amyloidosis, something that has a smaller but significant contribution to heart disease in earlier old age. Here, researchers assess the postmortem state of the brains of four supercentenarians, an exercise that well demonstrates that the oldest of humans don't escape unscathed: Supercentenarians (aged 110 years old or more) are extremely rare in the world population (the number of living supercentenarians is estimated as 47 in the world), and details about their neuropathological information are limited. Based on previous studies, centenarians (aged 100-109 years old) exhibit several types of neuropathological changes, such as Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body disease pathology, primary age-related tauopathy, TDP-43 pathology, and hippocampal sclerosis. In the present study, we provide results from neuropathological analyses of four supercentenarian autopsy cases using conventional and immunohistochemical analysis for neurodegenerative disorders. In particular, we focused on the pathology of Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body disease, as well as the status of hippocampal sclerosis...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs