The hairless, buck-toothed, and cold-blooded naked mole rat is an unusual animal. It grows to between 3 and 13 inches in length and lives in a complex underground tunnel system beneath the deserts and grasslands of east Africa. These animals can live for over 30 years, far beyond the lifespan of other rodents. And seemingly, without the physiological deterioration that affects most older animals. Scientists now believe that this apparent immunity to aging may hold the secret to preventing and treating aging-related diseases, such as dementia or cancer , in humans. Despite their relatively small size, naked mole rats are incredibly hardy. Researchers have studied thousands of these rodents and have rarely, if ever, found them to have cancer.
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Naked Mole Rats Offer Clues to Living Longer
It's a widely known fact that aging brings you closer to death—except if you're a naked mole rat. New research shows that these bizarre rodents defy the laws that govern aging for every other mammal. The discovery could potentially hold clues for extending human life and stopping the aging process. Our rising odds of death as we age are governed by a mortality law known as Gompertz-Makeham. This mathematical equation holds that from adulthood onward, our increase in age corresponds to an increase in our risk of death. Humans, for instance, double our risk of death every eight years from age 30 onward, according to Science.
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Chen Hou and his research collaborators have found an answer to the decades-old question of why naked mole-rats with high oxidative damage live 10 times longer than mice of comparative weight. The widely accepted theory of aging is based on a negative correlation between oxidative stress and animal lifespan. This theory posits that aging occurs because of accumulated cellular damage caused by the byproducts of oxidative metabolism — or the way we burn oxygen to produce energy. When a certain threshold of oxidative damage is reached, animals will die. To explain the contradiction, the researchers developed a data-based theoretical model that estimates oxidative damage accumulation with age.
Naked mole rats have extraordinarily long lifespans and are extremely resistant to cancer. Rochelle "Shelley" Buffenstein has one of the world's largest, if not the largest, lab-dwelling colonies of the naked mole rat. No one has done a worldwide tabulation, but she has 4, of them. Buffenstein has spent decades studying the little subterranean-dwelling rodents.
