How Some Centenarian 'Super-Agers' Are Surviving COVID-19
"We want to understand these protective genes — the ones that are slowing down aging, decreasing the risk for age-related diseases," said one expert.
There have been a number of people around the age of 100 who have beaten the coronavirus, and researchers want to know why. They’re being called “super-agers, and one theory is that these people simply age slower than others.
"We think that the genes are playing a pretty important role," Dr. Thomas Perls, a human longevity expert at Boston University Medical Center, told Inside Edition. "We want to understand these protective genes — the ones that are slowing down aging, decreasing the risk for age-related diseases."
There are about 60,000 centenarians in the United States, and Inside Edition spoke with several of them who survived the virus.
One 102-year-old woman, Angelina Friedman, was born on a ship on its way to America from Italy in 1918, and her family says she has superhuman DNA. Another man, Rudy Heider, also beat the virus, and recently turned 107.
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