Nordic Life Science 1
AGING RESEARCH // GEROSCIENCE HOT TOPIC THE SCIEN
CE OF AGING BETTER All over the world, countries are experiencing a demographic shift towards aging populations. The field of aging research seeks to answer the question of how we can age healthier, and not just live longer. T E X T B Y A L E X A N DR A HOEGBE R G P ROGRESS IN MEDICAL CARE, and improvements in living conditions and nutrition has led to substantially faster population aging than in the past. In 2020, the number of people over 60 years of age out-numbered the amount of children under the age of five worldwide, according to the WHO. An aging population means we’re seeing unprecedented levels of age-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzhemier’s and Parkinson’s Disease, and many other conditions. This poses two primary challenges: firstly the quality of life of the elderly population, and secondly the costs to society and the healthcare system. At the multidisciplinary Aging Research Centre (ARC) at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, a team of about 90 researchers tackle different aspects of aging. “Aging touches each and every one of us sooner or later. Today, we’re able to treat a number of diseases that were previously fatal, like stroke, myocardial infarction, and cancer – we’ve turned them into chronic diseases instead. We have the possibility to live longer, but the drawback is that we live longer with a higher burden of disease,” says Dr Davide Vetrano, an associate professor who leads one of ARC’s research groups. “Aging research is important to enable people to live a longer health span, to increase the proportion of life lived in good health, and to try to compress the years lived with disability and impairments during the very last years of life,” Vetrano says. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG | 49