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Scientists Urge Global Investment and Action Plan to Avert Impending Aging Crisis
http://www.scienceda...00714141532.htm
July 14, 2010 — Now that scientists have learned so much about aging through laboratory studies, it's time to translate those findings into medicines that can benefit our aging population. That was the message delivered by a panel of 10 preeminent aging experts that included Jan Vijg, Ph.D., chair of genetics and the Lola and Saul Kramer Chair in Molecular Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
The expert panel was convened by the LifeStar Institute, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about the consequences of global aging and supports medical research aimed at preventing and curing age-related diseases. Their report was published in the July 14 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The aging process results in significant social and medical costs that will rise rapidly in the coming decades as the number of elderly people increases. To prevent what it calls "a global aging crisis," the panel recommends that the U.S. and other countries collaborate in an international initiative that will translate laboratory findings about aging into new kinds of medicines.
More specifically, the panel urged countries to use their public health agencies to inform citizens about how they can improve their lifestyles so that they can live longer and healthier lives. In addition, the panel wrote, there is a need to develop regenerative therapies that could restore youthful structure and function in older people by repairing and neutralizing the cellular damage that occurs with aging.
"There is this misunderstanding that aging is something that just happens to you, like the weather, and cannot be influenced," said Dr. Vijg. "The big surprise of the last decades is that, in many different animals, we can increase healthy life span in various ways. A program of developing and testing similar interventions in humans would make both medical and economic sense."
Baby Boomer Health Care Crisis Looms
http://www.scienceda...80417111300.htm
Apr. 25, 2008 — America's aging citizens are facing a health care workforce too small and unprepared to meet their needs, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) titled "Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce."
The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the nation's largest organization devoted to aging research, fully supports the publication's call for a labor pool of adequate size and competency to care for a rapidly increasing over-65 population.
"This pivotal report lays out a much-needed strategy for developing a network of health professionals and frontline workers to avert a crisis in quality care for older persons," said GSA President Lisa Gwyther, MSW. "Complex chronic illness is an issue that we all will face with age. The current fragmented system of care desperately requires an increase in better-prepared personnel to sustain itself."
The report was the result of 15 months of research overseen by a committee of 15 health care experts, many of whom are GSA members.
Committee Chair John W. Rowe, MD, a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University and a former GSA president, said America must prepare itself for demographic changes.
"The combination of the aging of the Baby Boom generation and the increase in life expectancy is going to yield a doubling of the numbers of older people," he said. "And it's important to understand that older people themselves account for a disproportionate amount of the utilization of health care resources."
Despite these trends, "the actual number of geriatricians is going down, not up, in the United States," Rowe added.
Marie Bernard, MD, president of The Association for Gerontology in Higher Education (GSA's educational unit), said policymakers must act quickly to address these problems.
"To meet the needs of our aging parents and grandparents, we need to increase the number of geriatric health specialists — both to provide care for those older adults with the most complex issues and to train the rest of the workforce in the common medical problems of old age," Bernard said.
Sponsorship for the IOM project was provided by The John A. Hartford Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Retirement Research Foundation, The California Endowment, The Archstone Foundation, The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and The Commonwealth Fund.
Slowing Aging Is Way To Fight Diseases In 21st Century
http://www.scienceda...80708200624.htm
July 10, 2008 — A group of aging experts from the United States and the United Kingdom suggest that the best strategy for preventing and fighting a multitude of diseases is to focus on slowing the biological processes of aging.
"The traditional medical approach of attacking individual diseases -- cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease -- will soon become less effective if we do not determine how all of these diseases either interact or share common mechanisms with aging," says S. Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and senior author of the commentary.
Middle-aged and older people are most often impacted by simultaneous but independent medical conditions. A cure for any of the major fatal diseases would have only a marginal impact on life expectancy and the length of healthy life, Olshansky said.
The authors suggest that a new paradigm of health promotion and disease prevention could produce unprecedented social, economic and health dividends for current and future generations if the aging population is provided with extended years of healthy life.
They note that all living things, including humans, possess biochemical mechanisms that influence how quickly we age and, through dietary intervention or genetic alteration, it is possible to extend lifespan to postpone aging-related processes and diseases.
Further research in laboratory models is expected to provide clues and deeper understanding of how existing interventions, such as exercise and good nutrition, may lead to lifelong well-being.
The authors also propose greatly increased funding for basic research into the "fundamental cellular and physiological changes that drive aging itself."
"We believe that the potential benefits of slowing aging processes have been underrecognized by most of the scientific community," said Olshansky. "We call on the health-research decision-makers to allocate substantial resources to support and develop practical interventions that slow aging in people."
An increase in age-related diseases and escalating health care costs makes this the time for a "systematic attack on aging itself," the authors write.
Olshansky and colleagues contend that modern medicine is already heavily invested in efforts to extend life, and they argue that a fresh emphasis on aging has the potential to improve health and quality of life far more efficiently than is currently possible.
The analysis is published on www.BMJ.com
Olshansky's co-authors include Dr. Robert Butler of the International Longevity Center in New York, Dr. Richard Miller of the University of Michigan, Daniel Perry of the Alliance for Aging Research in Washington, Bruce Carnes and Dr. Marie Bernard of the University of Oklahoma, Dr. T. Franklin Williams of the University of Rochester, Dr. Christine Cassel of the American Board of Internal Medicine in Philadelphia, Dr. Jacob Brody of UIC, Linda Partridge of University College London, Thomas Kirkwood of Newcastle University and Dr. George Martin of the American Federation for Aging Research and University of Washington.