More on long-lived naked mole-rats and their ability to shrug off oxidative stress via Newsise: "The researchers next looked at how much damage the oxidation had caused. It is possible, they reasoned, that the mole-rat suffers greater oxidative stress, but its physiology had somehow prevented damage from occurring. The researchers measured oxidative damage in lipids, DNA and proteins and found that naked mole-rats showed much greater levels of damage to each of these biological molecules, in all tissues assayed, when compared to mice. ... All of the classical measures of oxidative stress are higher in the mole-rat. Given that naked mole-rats live an order of magnitude longer than predicted based on their body size, our findings strongly suggest that mechanisms other than attenuated oxidative stress may explain the impressive longevity of this species." A puzzle, and one we humans should be interested in the answer to: oxidative stress causes us serious damage and is one root cause of aging. How are the mole-rats getting away with it?

Link: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/524122/