# What Supercentenarians Teach Us About Taming Chronic Inflammation **URL:** \ **Category:** News\ **Created:** [November 13, 2026, 9:47pm UTC](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/what-supercentenarians-teach-us-about-taming-chronic-inflammation/27427 "2026-11-13T21:47:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RapAdmin](https://www.rapamycin.news/user_avatar/www.rapamycin.news/rapadmin/32/377_2.png) [@RapAdmin](https://www.rapamycin.news/u/RapAdmin)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2026, 9:47pm UTC](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/what-supercentenarians-teach-us-about-taming-chronic-inflammation/27427/1 "2026-11-13T21:47:37Z")
![CentenarianImmuneSystemsInflammation-2](https://www.rapamycin.news/uploads/default/original/3X/b/e/bea75e379286dbc6f290360fa160625a1c80df78.jpeg) **A narrative review from the University of Palermo argues that people who reach 100, 105 and 110 years do not keep a youthful immune system. Their immunity is heavily remodeled: naive T cells almost disappear, B cells decline, and natural killer cells, effector-memory CD8 T cells and an unusual population of killer-like CD4 T cells expand. What seems to set the longest-lived apart is not an absence of inflammation but better control of it. Inflammatory scores rise with age yet stay closer to young-adult values in many semi-supercentenarians, and in a large Japanese cohort a composite inflammation score predicted death, disability and cognitive decline even beyond 100. The authors frame extreme survival as successful accommodation of immune aging, shaped by sex, genes, infections and environment. The evidence is mostly cross-sectional, small and blood-based, so causality remains unproven.** For decades, immunologists have described the aging immune system as a story of decline. The thymus shrinks, naive T cells disappear, memory cells pile up, and a smoldering background inflammation, nicknamed inflammaging, wears down tissues. If that were the whole story, the oldest humans should have the most broken immune systems of all. A new review from the University of Palermo suggests they do not, and that the reason is more interesting than simple preservation. Calogero Caruso, Giuseppina Candore and colleagues pulled together flow cytometry, single-cell sequencing and long-term cohort data on centenarians (100 and older), semi-supercentenarians (105 and older) and supercentenarians (110 and older). Their verdict is that these immune systems look old. Thymic output is close to zero, true naive T cells are rare and B cells decline. In one Japanese study, B cells made up about 2 percent of blood immune cells in supercentenarians compared with 11 percent in younger controls. The interesting part is what expands. Natural killer cells, effector-memory CD8 T cells and, most strikingly, CD4 T cells that behave like killer cells all increase. In supercentenarians these cytotoxic CD4 cells made up a median of 17.6 percent of CD4 T cells, against 4.0 percent in people aged 70 to 99. Many came from a few large clones, consistent with decades of response to persistent infections such as cytomegalovirus, yet they showed little sign of exhaustion. The authors read this as a standing surveillance force against infected and cancerous cells, which would fit the very low cancer rates reported after 100. The second theme is inflammation. Most centenarians carry higher inflammatory markers than young adults. Yet in a Sicilian cohort, the semi- and supercentenarians had composite inflammation scores closer to those of younger age groups. In a Japanese study of 1,554 very old people, a combined inflammation score predicted death in centenarians and semi-supercentenarians, while telomere length did not. The children of centenarians already had lower inflammation than their peers. Healthy centenarians also appear to keep NLRP3 inflammasome expression at young-adult levels, and lymphocytes from a small group aged 105 to 107 handled an oxidative challenge more like young cells than old ones. Sex runs through everything. Women make up about 83 percent of Italy’s 23,548 centenarians and 19 of its roughly 20 living supercentenarians. The review links part of this to immune genes on the X chromosome that escape silencing and to slower inflammatory aging in women, alongside behavioral and environmental differences. The unifying idea is immunobiography: each person’s immune system is sculpted by a lifetime of infections, vaccines, diet, microbes and stress. There is no single centenarian immune profile, only different routes to a workable balance between memory, killing power and inflammatory restraint. The caveats are substantial. Nearly all the data are cross-sectional snapshots of blood, many cohorts number in single digits, and features found in survivors are labeled adaptive without evidence that they caused survival. Even so, the message for everyone else fits the wider aging literature: keeping chronic inflammation under control, more than keeping individual immune cells young, may be what tracks with a long and healthy life. ## Actionable Insights These are associations, not tested treatments: reasonable bets, not proven fixes. 1. Measure and manage chronic inflammation. In Japanese adults aged 85 to 99, each step up in a combined inflammation score (IL-6, TNF-alpha, CRP, CMV antibodies) came with an 89 percent higher risk of death; in centenarians, 36 percent higher. Inflammation explained only about 9 to 11 percent of differences in physical ability and thinking. A high-sensitivity CRP test plus a routine blood count gives a cheap baseline: neutrophils times monocytes divided by lymphocytes is the SIRI index the Sicilian group tracked. 2. Stay active. A single bout of exercise lowered TNF in centenarians, though the size of the drop was not reported. 3. Keep vaccinations current. Vaccine-induced T cell memory can persist for 70 years, and centenarians carried antibodies to the 1918 flu at about 50 times the level of 70-year-olds. 4. Eat for your gut. A Mediterranean pattern and daily fermented dairy feature in the record-holder’s profile, but that is a single person. 5. Don’t panic over expanded memory or CMV-driven T cells on an advanced immune panel; in the oldest people these coexist with survival. The biggest number in the paper, life spent with disease falling from 17.9 to 5.2 percent, describes supercentenarians, not a benefit anyone can buy. ## Context and Source - Open Access Paper: [Why Some People Live Past 100: The Role of the Immune System in Centenarians, Semi-Supercentenarians and Supercentenarians](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42794847/) - **Institution:** Laboratory of Immunopathology and Immunosenescence, Department of Biomedicine, Neuroscience and Advanced Diagnostics, University of Palermo - **Country:** Italy - **Journal:** International Journal of Molecular Sciences (MDPI), 2026 - **Impact evaluation:** The impact score of this journal is 5.6 (2025 Journal Impact Factor, Clarivate JCR June 2026 release; CiteScore 10.0), evaluated against a typical high-end range of 0 to 60+ for top general science, therefore this is a **Medium impact journal.** #### Related Reading: - [Study of Japanese Centenarians Identifies a “Unique” Gut Microbiome](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/study-of-japanese-centenarians-identifies-a-unique-gut-microbiome/7670) - [For the first time, Japan has more than 100,000 centenarians](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/for-the-first-time-japan-has-more-than-100-000-centenarians/26604) - [7 activities Japanese centenarians do daily that add years to life](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/7-activities-japanese-centenarians-do-daily-that-add-years-to-life/22437) - [The Century-Old Immunome: Learning from the Adaptive Shield of Human Centenarians](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/the-century-old-immunome-learning-from-the-adaptive-shield-of-human-centenarians/25040) - [Centenarians’ Arteries Stay Flexible: Clues for Keeping Blood Vessels Young](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/centenarians-arteries-stay-flexible-clues-for-keeping-blood-vessels-young/27233) - [Feed the Fermenters: Centenarian Gut Microbes Point to Fiber as a Healthy-Aging Lever](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/feed-the-fermenters-centenarian-gut-microbes-point-to-fiber-as-a-healthy-aging-lever/27128) ---
**Author:** ![RobTuck](https://www.rapamycin.news/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/d6d6ee/32.png) [@RobTuck](https://www.rapamycin.news/u/RobTuck)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2026, 4:46pm UTC](https://www.rapamycin.news/t/what-supercentenarians-teach-us-about-taming-chronic-inflammation/27427/2 "2026-11-14T16:46:24Z")
I have to be careful, this reinforces my “theory” that inflammation is the primary inflection point, irrespective of whether it leads the causal chain or is at most one or two steps down.