They are resistant to cardiovascular diseases, dementia, and diabetes. What an injustice, they don’t even get acne! And all of this despite the fact that many of them are overweight and consume a lot of processed food,” wonders Nicklas Brendborg, a Danish researcher who delved into the “phenomenon” of people with Laron Syndrome. In his book The Key to Immortality, he explains how this is possible.
They are of short stature. It’s Laron Syndrome.
In 1958, Israeli doctor Zvi Laron, along with his colleagues, began studying a particular group of patients. All of them were affected by short stature, but not in the way we usually think of. The patients with Laron Syndrome were undoubtedly short, measuring around 120 cm, but their body proportions were different from those typically associated with dwarfism. They did not have short limbs or large heads. They simply looked like ordinary people, just smaller.
Laron’s team spent eight years searching for the cause of the newly discovered syndrome before finally sharing their findings. It turned out that patients with what is now known as Laron Syndrome are short due to a genetic mutation related to the growth hormone. However, the defect does not involve the growth hormone itself, as the levels of the hormone in the blood of Laron’s patients were quite high. The issue lay with the growth hormone receptor, the receptor responsible for detecting the hormone by the cell and triggering its response.
This mechanism can be visualized through the following analogy. Imagine a cell as a castle ruled by a powerful but paranoid king. The ruler is hesitant to let outsiders into the castle, so if someone wants to speak with him, they must first shout their message to the guards stationed in the castle tower. In a normal situation, the guard would go to the ruler and deliver the message, and the king would issue the appropriate orders. However, if the guards are deaf, they won’t hear the message, no matter how loudly the visitors shout at the gates, and the king won’t receive the message or be able to respond to it.
Similarly, in patients with Laron Syndrome, the growth hormone signal never reaches the inside of their cells. The defect in the growth hormone receptor means that even if there are large amounts of growth hormone molecules circulating in the bloodstream, they do not trigger growth processes.
Almost 500 years after the first Spaniards landed on the shores of both Americas, a newly graduated doctor from Ecuador decided to solve a mystery from his childhood. Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, as he is called, remembered that during his adolescence, he encountered an unexpectedly high number of people affected by short stature. As a graduate in medicine, he was determined to find out what could have caused this. His curiosity led him back to his hometown, to the mountainous province of Loja.
There, he had to ride a horse to reach a place that he had chosen as the final destination of his expedition— a remote village hidden deep in the mountains. The effort was worth it, as he finally met people who looked like those he had remembered from his childhood.
The solution to the mystery was Laron Syndrome, which was present in all these people. Unbeknownst to them, they were distant relatives of the Israeli patients of Zvi Laron. It turned out that these Ecuadorians were descendants of Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity and later participated in the colonization of both Americas. In contrast, the Israeli patients of Laron descended from those Spanish Jews who chose differently and left Spain to preserve their religion. Although the twists of history had separated these two groups, Laron’s discovery reunited them. Today, we know that one of their common ancestors must have had a mutation in the growth hormone receptor.
However, it is not enough to inherit just one defective gene to be born with Laron Syndrome. A person with one mutated gene would still have a fully functional version of the gene from the other parent and would only be a few centimeters shorter than usual. However, if both parents pass on defective genes, there will be no functional growth hormone receptors at all. Only then will a person be born with Laron Syndrome.
For this reason, the condition is rare in Israel today. It is unlikely that both prospective parents are carriers of the mutation and pass it on to their offspring. However, in the remote villages of the Loja province, Laron Syndrome occurs much more frequently. The reason is the same as with the Amish in Berne, as mentioned earlier. Loja is an isolated region that was settled by a small group of people. Over time, its population began to grow due to marriages between its members.
They are resistant to diseases despite a poor diet.
Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, having found the perfect location to study Laron Syndrome, did not waste time and soon made another extraordinary discovery. It turned out that people with Laron Syndrome almost never develop cancer. During the entire study period on these small people, only one case of cancer was recorded. Since cancers are characterized by the excessive multiplication of cells, it seems logical that the lack of growth signals would have a protective effect.
But that’s not all. During the observation, it was found that people with Laron Syndrome also do not develop other age-related diseases. They are resistant to cardiovascular diseases, dementia, and diabetes. What an injustice — they don’t even get acne! All this despite the fact that many of them are overweight and consume a lot of processed food. It seems that the Laron mutation protects these people from diseases, despite their not-so-healthy eating habits.
People with Laron Syndrome live longer
In order to better understand Laron Syndrome, researchers bred mice with damaged growth hormone receptors. Just like their human counterparts, these mice are significantly smaller than average but have regular body proportions. And similarly to people with Laron Syndrome, Laron mice are bursting with health. It turned out that they live much longer than usual – various studies show they live 16–55% longer.
So, how does it work for humans? If smaller animals tend to live longer in the animal kingdom, should tall people be concerned? Well, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days, set the record for the longest lifespan, but longevity wasn’t her only unusual trait. The second one was her height—she was only 150 cm tall.
Right after Jeanne Calment on the list of longevity record holders are American Sarah Knauss, who was 140 cm tall, followed by Marie-Louise Meilleur (150 cm) and Emma Morano (152 cm). Granted, these women were born in times when people were generally shorter than we are today. However, if you look at the information about the longest-living members of our species, you’ll quickly realize that they wouldn’t make a good basketball team—even in their own times.
When we zoom down from the species level to populations, the link between height and lifespan remains noticeable. For example, remember how we discussed that people from Northern Europe generally die earlier than people from Southern Europe or East Asia, even though Northern European countries are wealthier? Well, Northern Europeans are also taller than Southern Europeans and East Asians, so that might explain it.
Another example could be the discovery debated by American sociologists, known as the “Latino Paradox.” This refers to the fact that Hispanic Americans tend to live longer than white Americans, even though the latter theoretically “should” live longer: they are wealthier, better educated, and have slightly lower obesity rates. But… Hispanic Americans tend to be shorter.
A third example could be the “Blue Zones.” We have Okinawa, where some of the shortest Japanese people live—and they are among the shortest people in developed countries. Then there’s Sardinia, where some of the shortest Europeans live. The average height of men in Sardinia is about 168 cm, which is several centimeters shorter than the Italian average and about 15 cm shorter than the tallest population in Europe. We know that the short stature of Sardinians has a genetic basis, and—here’s the kicker—partly due to the Laron mutation. Around 0.87% of Sardinians carry it, one of the highest frequencies in the world, though not as high as among the Ecuadorians from Loja.
But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that if you’re tall, your fate is to die young. And conversely, being shorter doesn’t guarantee you’ll live long. These are average data. Many short people die young, while many tall people live long and healthy lives. However, when you average it out, body size and lifespan are linked, and that means we can draw conclusions about aging processes that could benefit all of us.
Summary
The relationship between height and lifespan is complex but noticeable in various studies. Notably, some of the longest-living people in history, such as Jeanne Calment (122 years) and Sarah Knauss (119 years), were relatively short, with heights around 150 cm. This trend is also evident in certain populations; for example, people from Northern Europe, who are generally taller, tend to have shorter lifespans compared to those from Southern Europe or East Asia, who are shorter on average. Similarly, Hispanic Americans, despite being wealthier and healthier, tend to live longer than white Americans, likely due to their shorter stature. In “Blue Zones” like Okinawa and Sardinia, where people live longer, the population tends to be shorter, partly due to genetic factors, such as the Laron mutation. However, while shorter people may live longer on average, this is not a strict rule—many tall people live long and healthy lives. These observations suggest a link between body size and aging, providing insights into the aging process.
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