End of ageing

How easy is it to become a long-liver?

No less a popular topic than the landmark outcomes of the SCO summit in China was a snippet of conversation between the leaders of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, which made its way into the media, about the idea that 70 years old today is far from old age and that people in this century will possibly live to be 150 years old. The basis for such conclusions is breakthroughs in the development of biotechnologies and the results of organ transplantation. Are we approaching immortality? 

Mysteries of age

The secrets of longevity have not yet been solved, although attempts are made regularly. In the USA last year, they even created a bank of stem cells taken from people over 100 years old. Biologist George J. Murphy from Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine sees a wide field for research: he is inspired by the amazing ability of those who have crossed the century mark to recover from strokes and injuries. It is not yet clear how the research will end — we await the result.
American cardiologist Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego), approached the topic from a different angle several years ago. Together with his colleagues, he studied the genome of approximately 1,400 Americans over the age of 80 without serious health problems. But, alas, he did not find convincing evidence of genetic factors that could explain this phenomenon. The mystery of longevity once again remained unsolved.
Every year, centenarians present researchers with more mysteries. This is acknowledged, for example, by scientists from the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), who conducted two large-scale, long-term studies involving almost half a million people, and inadvertently disproved the common belief that the longer a person lives, the more illnesses they have. It turned out that people aged 100+ are less prone to strokes with each passing year. A similar trend was observed in the case of myocardial infarction. A paradox? No, this is a topic worthy of further study.

Transplantation offers hope

One reason for increased life expectancy is improved healthcare. Transplantology plays a significant role here, in particular its development.
The first successful human organ transplant was a cornea transplant, performed in 1905 by Austrian ophthalmologist Eduard Zirm. In 1933, Soviet surgeon Yuri Voronoy performed the world’s first kidney transplant on a human from a deceased donor. In 1937, Vladimir Demikhov performed the first implantation of an artificial heart. The first pancreas transplant to a human was performed in 1966 at the University of Minnesota. Currently, thousands of transplants of individual organs and even entire complexes are performed worldwide annually, the most frequently performed being kidney, liver, and heart transplant surgeries.
Last year, 492 organ transplant surgeries were performed in Belarus, including 351 kidneys, 43 hearts, 91 livers, and seven lungs. In our country, the waiting time for a donor organ is on average 211 days. In England, this period is up to 3.3 years, and in Germany — 3.5 to 4 years.
Thanks to the state policy aimed at developing medicine in general and transplantology in particular, Belarus is among the world’s top ten countries for successful organ transplantation, while the waiting list for a donor organ here is one of the shortest. For Belarusian citizens, all organ and tissue transplant surgeries in our country are free of charge.

   

Older people are surrounded by care

Belarus is in the middle of the global life expectancy ranking. According to Belstat data for 2024, the average is 74.7 years, among women and men — 79.8 and 69.3 years, respectively. Since 1995, Belarusians have begun to live 6.1 years longer. The positive trend is obvious. Notably, among all citizens of respectable age, three residents of Belarus were over 110 years old last autumn.
A year ago, Deputy Labour and Social Protection Minister Marina Artemenko noted that the number of long-livers was increasing in parallel with the improvement of the quality of life, “We have more than 40,000 people over 90 years old today. The number of those who are over 100 years old is also rising: there are more than 600 of them. About 85 percent of long-livers are women.”
Since the process of population ageing is a long-term trend and it will persist, our country is developing comprehensive approaches to social policy to support senior citizens. The general document is the National Strategy of the Republic of Belarus, Active Longevity 2030, approved in 2020. Belarus’ Labour and Social Protection Ministry has stated that it served as a powerful incentive for the development of various areas in relation to older citizens.

  

Long road through permafrost

The human dream of extending life is often linked to cryonics — a technology for preserving humans and animals in a state of deep cooling, in the hope that they can be revived in the future and, if necessary, cured. Sometimes only the head or brain is cryopreserved. Many scientists, however, are sceptical both about the possibility of reviving people in principle and about the approaches to storing bodies. Among the well-known cryonics companies with their own storage facilities are Alcor (USA), TransTime (USA), the Cryonics Institute (USA), KrioRus (Russia) and the Yinfeng Life Science Foundation (PRC). The closest to Belarus is KrioRus, based in Moscow.

LIFE WITH A SEQUEL 

• A heart transplant allows patients to live an additional 10–15 years. The world record for longevity after a heart transplant belongs to American Tony Huesman, who lived more than 30 years. 
• The average life expectancy of patients after a liver transplant is 14 years, after a lung transplant — 6 years, after a kidney transplant — from 10 to 20 years. 
• However, there are recipients who live with transplants for 20, 30 years or even more. First of all, it is necessary to understand that the average life expectancy after transplantation is significantly longer than without it.


By Aleksandr Nesterov, Alena Krasovskaya