Scientists Say They Have Discovered Maximum Age A Human Can Reach

The researchers believe they have identified the upper limit of human mortality. According to their findings, a human can expect to live for up to 150 years. 

This is not the first study to look at the human life span. Another study published in 2016 by Jan Vijg, a geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, suggested that humans are unlikely to live longer than 125 years. On the other hand, other research reports have argued that there is no absolute limit to human life because it can be lengthened as technology advances.

Currently, French Jeanne Calment holds the record for the oldest human being, having died in 1997 at the age of 122. If the scientists' hypothesis is correct, this will break Calment's current record for the oldest human. The study was recently published in the journal Nature Communications by the researchers.

Scientists at Gero, a Singapore-based biotech company, collaborated with biologists and biophysicists at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, NY, and three Russian research institutes to quantify the aging process in humans.

According to a study that used longitudinal analysis of blood markers to reveal progressive loss of resilience in human cells, the limit of life is calculated to be between 120 and 150 years. 

The study is based on the concept of biological aging, also known as senescence – how quickly our bodies deteriorate, which may or may not correspond to our chronological age.

The researchers examined large datasets from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, which included anonymized medical data for over 500,000 people. They used data from a simple blood test, which was available in almost everyone's datasets. The blood tests were administered several times over the course of a few months to individuals.

Scientists used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze the volunteers' health and fitness information. According to their findings, the human lifespan is heavily influenced by two factors: biological age and resilience. The former is linked to stress, lifestyle, and chronic diseases, while the latter is linked to how quickly a person returns to his or her normal condition.

In this case, scientist used a computer model to determine what they called dynamic organism state indicator, or DOSI, for each person based on the blood tests — essentially a measure of "biological age" that they could use in conjunction with the time between blood tests to quantify how well a person would be able to recover from stress, such as illness or injury.

After analyzing their findings and trends, the researchers discover that resilience or recovery rate is faster in young people but declines with age. While healthy 40-year-old humans recover in about two weeks, the average 80-year-old takes six weeks. The researchers also predict that the human body would lose its ability to recover from stresses such as illness and injury after 120 to 150 years of age, resulting in death. The researchers argue that if therapies to increase the body's resilience are developed, humans may live longer, healthier lives. This finding is quantitatively confirmed by the researchers using two independent biological measures, blood test parameters and physical activity levels.

"We conclude that the criticality resulting in the end of life is an intrinsic biological property of an organism that is independent of stress factors and signifies a fundamental or absolute limit of human lifespan," the study, published in Nature Communications, adds.

Study first author Dr. Tim Pyrkov of Gero said, "Calculation of resilience based on physical activity data streams has been implemented in the GeroSense iPhone app.

"It shows a complete loss of human body resilience, that is the ability to recover, at some age around 120 to 150 years old."

He also added, "As we age, more and more time is required to recover after a perturbation, and on average we spend less and less time close to the optimal physiological state."

According to the study, adopting a healthy lifestyle, quitting bad habits, and engaging in other experimental interventions can help people live longer and have a higher quality of life.