{"id":35227,"date":"2025-09-24T21:01:37","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=35227"},"modified":"2025-09-26T19:23:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T19:23:15","slug":"how-did-maria-branyas-morera-who-was-the-worlds-oldest-person-live-so-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=35227","title":{"rendered":"How Did Maria Branyas Morera, Who Was the World\u2019s Oldest Person, Live So Long?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Spanish researchers say Maria Branyas Morera, who lived to 117, won a genetic lottery. But experts caution that healthy genes and microbiomes don\u2019t explain longevity on their own.<\/p>\n

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Maria Branyas Morera, then the world\u2019s oldest living person, had one last request before she died. \u201cPlease study me,\u201d she said to Dr. Manel Esteller, chairman of genetics at the University of Barcelona\u2019s School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

A resident of Olot, Spain, she died last summer<\/a> at age 117.<\/p>\n

Dr. Esteller and a large cohort of colleagues fulfilled her wish. They examined Ms. Branyas\u2019s blood, saliva, urine and stool to try to learn why she lived so long.<\/p>\n

The answer in part, according to a paper published Wednesday<\/a> in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, is that she took care of herself. She followed a Mediterranean diet, did not smoke or drink, and walked an hour a day until the early 2000s when doing so became too difficult. And she won the genetic lottery with variants that, the researchers said, could predict longevity. These genetic variants have been reported to protect against common risk factors like high cholesterol levels, dementia, heart disease and cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had cells that seemed younger than her age,\u201d Dr. Esteller said.<\/p>\n

The microbes that lived in and on her body, or her microbiome, are associated with low levels of inflammation, he added. Her microbiome had an abundance of a type of beneficial bacteria, Bifidobacterium, whose growth can be spurred by bacteria in yogurt. Ms. Branyas ate three yogurts a day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHigh levels of inflammation are related to advanced aging,\u201d Dr. Esteller said.<\/p>\n

Immaculata De Vivo, a molecular geneticist at Harvard University who was not involved in the study, said the researchers\u2019 explanations for Ms. Branyas\u2019s longevity were \u201cscientifically reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, she cautioned, \u201cit\u2019s always important to be careful when interpreting results from individual cases, as opposed to large, well-controlled population studies.\u201d While genetics and metabolic factors might tilt the odds for or against disease, \u201cdisease causation is generally a matter of probabilities rather than absolutes,\u201d Dr. De Vivo said.<\/p>\n

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Spanish researchers say Maria Branyas Morera, who lived to 117, won a genetic lottery. But experts caution that healthy genes and microbiomes don\u2019t explain longevity on their own.Maria Branyas Morera, then the world\u2019s oldest living person, had one last request before she died. \u201cPlease study me,\u201d she said to Dr. Manel Esteller, chairman of genetics at the University of Barcelona\u2019s School of Medicine.A resident of Olot, Spain, she died last summer at age 117.Dr. Esteller and a large cohort of colleagues fulfilled her wish. They examined Ms. Branyas\u2019s blood, saliva, urine and stool to try to learn why she lived so long.The answer in part, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, is that she took care of herself. She followed a Mediterranean diet, did not smoke or drink, and walked an hour a day until the early 2000s when doing so became too difficult. And she won the genetic lottery with variants that, the researchers said, could predict longevity. These genetic variants have been reported to protect against common risk factors like high cholesterol levels, dementia, heart disease and cancer.\u201cShe had cells that seemed younger than her age,\u201d Dr. Esteller said.The microbes that lived in and on her body, or her microbiome, are associated with low levels of inflammation, he added. Her microbiome had an abundance of a type of beneficial bacteria, Bifidobacterium, whose growth can be spurred by bacteria in yogurt. Ms. Branyas ate three yogurts a day.\u201cHigh levels of inflammation are related to advanced aging,\u201d Dr. Esteller said.Immaculata De Vivo, a molecular geneticist at Harvard University who was not involved in the study, said the researchers\u2019 explanations for Ms. Branyas\u2019s longevity were \u201cscientifically reasonable.\u201dBut, she cautioned, \u201cit\u2019s always important to be careful when interpreting results from individual cases, as opposed to large, well-controlled population studies.\u201d While genetics and metabolic factors might tilt the odds for or against disease, \u201cdisease causation is generally a matter of probabilities rather than absolutes,\u201d Dr. De Vivo said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35229,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35230,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35227\/revisions\/35230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}