Cancer is one of the leading causes of death and its prevalence increases with age. While centenarians exhibit extreme longevity and potential to avoid or delay aging-related diseases, their response to cancer is still barely explored. Our study took advantage of the Electronic Health Records to retrospectively compare the severity of cancer in centenarians (n = 649) and non-centenarians (n = 62,753) in the Basque Country (province of Gipuzkoa), Spain, through analyzing all the recorded diagnoses throughout their lifetime. Descriptive statistics were applied to discern differences between the two population groups in terms of prevalence of tumor types, number of diagnoses, and treatments. Survival analysis was performed through Kaplan–Meier estimator. We found that centenarians had fewer cancer diagnoses (17.1%, n = 111) than non-centenarians (40.5%, n = 25,405), and notably avoided the most aggressive cancer types and did not develop metastasis. Furthermore, they barely had records of treatments or drugs and had extended survival both since the first and last diagnosis of cancer. These results suggest resilience of the centenarians against malignant cancers explaining, in part, their extended longevity.

癌症是导致死亡的主要原因之一，其患病率随着年龄的增长而增加。虽然百岁老人表现出极长的寿命和避免或延缓与衰老相关的疾病的潜力，但他们对癌症的反应仍然几乎没有被探索。我们的研究利用电子健康记录回顾性比较了西班牙巴斯克地区（吉普斯夸省）百岁老人 （n = 649） 和非百岁老人 （n = 62,753） 的癌症严重程度，通过分析他们一生中所有记录的诊断。应用描述性统计来辨别两个人群组在肿瘤类型患病率、诊断数量和治疗方面的差异。通过 Kaplan-Meier 估计器进行生存分析。我们发现，百岁老人的癌症诊断率 （17.1%，n = 111） 低于非百岁老人 （40.5%，n = 25,405），并且明显避免了最具侵袭性的癌症类型，并且没有发生转移。此外，他们几乎没有治疗或药物的记录，并且自第一次和最后一次诊断出癌症以来，生存期都延长了。这些结果表明，百岁老人对恶性癌症的抵抗力在一定程度上解释了他们延长寿命的原因。