How to make a century and more

But hearing aside, Vaught, the oldest resident of the Friends Nursing Home in Sandy Spring, Maryland, is alert, reads a newspaper every day and responds to questions in writing. She8217;s among a growing number of centenarians whose lives are being studied by scientists to sort out the mysterious combination of behaviour and genetics that determine why some people live so long.

Vaught8217;s parents lived into their 90s. She was born and raised on a farm in Indiana, taught school and married a Quaker. She and her late husband never drank alcohol or smoked. She also has maintained the right attitude and diet.

8220;Before it became popular, she was into healthy cooking. There was never anything fried,8221; said her only daughter, Ann Larson, who lives near Chicago. 8220;Second, she8217;s very serene. She doesn8217;t have huge mood swings or get stressed.8221;

Researchers look for patterns like these in their quest to understand the genetic and molecular underpinnings of ageing. 8220;The holy grail in the field is finding longevity genes, genes that slow down the rate of aging and reduce susceptibility to age-related diseases,8221; said Dr Thomas Perls, a physician at Boston University Medical Center who enrolled Vaught in his New England Centenarian Study four years ago.

Perls is seeking volunteers for another five-year, 18 million study 8212; funded by the National Institute on Aging 8212; that looks for common genetic traits and health habits in families with more than two members who have reached 90.

Perls and other experts are still stumped as to why some people who don8217;t work at it manage to lead long lives. For every clean-living Lois Vaught, there8217;s a Jeanne Louise Calment.

Calment was a Frenchwoman who, by all accounts, smoked until a few years before her death 8212; and only stopped then because she no longer could light her cigarettes. When she died in 1997, at the age of 122, she was the oldest person to be reliably documented.

8220;The lifestyles of these people are all across the board,8221; said S Jay Olshansky, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But, 8220;to make it past 100, you have to have been born having already won the genetic lottery8221;.

In mid-December, Dutch scientists reported a key genetic link in the process 8212; evidence that the ability to repair the kind of DNA damage that routinely occurs in our cells plays a critical role in how rapidly we age. Mice genetically designed to lack a critical DNA repair gene not only aged more quickly than normal mice but also showed the same symptoms as a 15-year-old suffering from progeria, a rare genetic disorder that ages children and shortens their lives.

The goal of the study, which appeared in Nature and two journals published by the Public Library of Science, was to examine what happens at the cellular level when we age, the authors say.

8220;First of all, we8217;re trying to understand the ageing process. Second, we8217;d like to help in the development of compounds to treat these patients,8221; said Jan HJ Hoeijmakers, a senior author of the study. But reliable anti-ageing therapies are years away, many experts agree.

8220;We8217;re still down to diet and exercise,8221; said Dr S Mitchell Harman, a former Johns Hopkins researcher who is now director and president of the Kronos Longevity Research Institute.

Experts say that with medical advances, we should continue to live longer. 8220;There8217;s a feeling that with improved health care, humans will one day be living to 100,8221; said Siu Sylvia Lee from Cornell University, a researcher who studies the genetics of ageing. 8220;I think it8217;s possible, but there8217;s no data to support it. We8217;ll have to wait and see.8221;

8212;Dennis O8217;Brien / LATWP