80 years old and a brain like a razor. A surprising discovery about Super-Agers

The idea is to live to old age in good health – people with these two genetic advantages are extremely resistant to dementia in old age. It turned out that the population of people over 80 years of age may also be at risk of carrying a gene variant associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

And although genes are not the only factor that plays a major role, exceptional memory in old age is partly written in the genome of people belonging to the group of Super-Agers.

This was our surprising discovery. Although all adults who reach the age of 80 (without a diagnosis of dementia) show an exceptional rate of aging, our study suggests that the Super-Agers phenotype can be used to identify a group of oldest-old adults at reduced genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Super-Agers are people whose memory can be described as unique in their demographic category. It matches the memory of people much younger. Imaging studies have shown differences in brain structure and its resistance to amyloid plaques (responsible for Alzheimer’s) between Super-Agers and the rest of the population.

Scientists announced that this is only the beginning of research in this area. The phenotype of the Super-Agers group will prove useful in further research on the mechanisms providing resistance to Alzheimer’s disease.