Misbah Ali

The Health and Welfare Ministry of Japan has informed on September 14, 2021, that the number of centenarians (a person who is a hundred or more years old) in the country has hit a record high of more than 86,000.

The government survey reflected that 86,510 people are aged 100 or above in the nation which is 6,060 more than a year ago.

Japanese media reported that this is the 51st consecutive year when the number of centenarians in the nation has escalated.

The survey also reflected that 88% of the total centenarians are women, while the oldest woman is Tanaka Kane who is 118-year-old and the oldest man is aged 111-year-old.

With 134.75 per 1, 00,000 people, Japan’s Shimane Prefecture has the highest percentage of this population, the Japanese media reported.

Kochi Prefecture, with 126.29 per 100,000 people comes after Shimane, while Kagoshima Prefecture logs a ratio of 118.74.

Meanwhile, research workers from the Buck Institute and Stanford University have created an inflammatory clock of aging (iAge) that measures inflammatory load and predicts multi-morbidity, frailty, immune health, cardiovascular aging and is also linked with exceptional longevity among centenarians.

Utilising deep learning, a form of AI, in the research of the blood immunome of 1001 people, authors also identified a modifiable chemokine linked with cardiac aging which can be utilised for early detection of age-related pathology and provides a target for interventions. Findings are published in Nature Aging.