There are many people in the world today that wish nothing more than to live a long and healthy life, perhaps even reaching the venerable age of 100 years old. A new investigation reveals one of the key elements that make this possible, in the form of an inherited cellular repair mechanism that is able to do its job in a highly effective manner. In some people, these mechanisms delay aging considerably, and also prevent diseases. With this in mind, scientists are now working on new methods of reverse-engineering the knowledge into an anti-aging drug, but the medicine is still years away.

“Humans of exceptional longevity are better able to maintain the length of their telomeres. And we found that they owe their longevity, at least in part, to advantageous variants of genes involved in telomere maintenance,” Yousin Suh reveals. The expert is an associate professor of medicine and of genetics at the Yeshiva University Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The new research was conducted on Ashkenazi Jews. It was discovered that the oldest individual of this group had a hyperactive version of the enzyme telomerase, which is in charge of reconstructing the telomeres.

“Our research was meant to answer two questions. Do people who live long lives tend to have long telomeres? And if so, could variations in their genes that code for telomerase account for their long telomeres?” Gil Atzmon, also a researcher at the Albert Einstein College, says in a statement. The answer found was, “Yes,” considering that the studied seniors had “inherited mutant genes that make their telomerase-making system extra active and able to maintain telomere length more effectively. For the most part, these people were spared age-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which cause most deaths among elderly people,” the research team says.

“Our findings suggest that telomere length and variants of telomerase genes combine to help people live very long lives, perhaps by protecting them from the diseases of old age. We're now trying to understand the mechanism by which these genetic variants of telomerase maintain telomere length in centenarians. Ultimately, it may be possible to develop drugs that mimic the telomerase that our centenarians have been blessed with,” Suh adds, quoted by LiveScience.

Anti-aging drugs have been in the making for a long time, but on a different number of approaches. The various avenues of research that were tried out were innovative, to say the least, but they did not yield conclusive results. It may be that they will in the future, and the new study is just another one to add to the list of researches to be followed for future developments.