Beating age would be a better objective for medicine than tackling individual diseases such as cancer and heart disease, according to a controversial new theory.
The ability to slow down the ageing process would provide better health and economic returns than continued advances in individual diseases such as cancer or heart disease, researchers said.
Modest gains in understanding how to slow down the ageing process would result in an additional 5% of healthy – rather than disabled – adults over the age of 65 every year from 2030 to 2060, according to the study.
A study in the October issue of Health Affairs from scientists at US-based institutions including Harvard University and Columbia University, says such investment would result in a 1.25% reduction in the likelihood of age-related diseases.
Until now there have been no assessments on the costs and health returns on developing therapies for delayed aging. This study has been hailed as a “benchmark in the world of public health” by the authors.
“In the last half-century, major life expectancy gains were driven by finding ways to reduce mortality from fatal diseases," said lead author Professor Dana Goldman, Leonard D. Schaeffer Director’s Chair at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.
“But now disabled life expectancy is rising faster than total life expectancy, leaving the number of years that one can expect to live in good health unchanged or diminished. If we can age more slowly, we can delay the onset and progression of many disabling diseases simultaneously.”
The study shows lower and declining returns for continuing the existing research “disease model”, which looks at fatal diseases independently, rather than tackling ageing, which is the underlying cause of frailty and disability.
He said reducing the incidence of cancer by 25% over the next few decades would “barely improve population health” over not doing anything at all.
There is a similar picture for heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. It was found that there would be about the same number of older adults alive but disabled in 2060 whether there are continued improvements to combat cancer and heart disease individually.
Major advances in cancer treatment or heart disease would enable a 51-year-old to live about one more year, while modest improvements in delaying ageing would double that – and those years are much more likely to be spent in good health.
However, the study did not predict lower health care spending if there were more healthy, older people.
“Even a marginal success in slowing ageing is going to have a huge impact on health and quality of life,” agrees co-author Jay Olshansky of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
“This is a fundamentally new approach to public health that would attack the underlying risk factors for all fatal and disabling diseases. We need to begin the research now.”
Prof Goldman concluded: “Shifting the focus of medical investment to delayed ageing instead of targeting diseases individually would lead to significant gains in physical health and social engagement.”
Goldman D, Olshansky J et al. Substantial Health And Economic Returns From Delayed Aging May Warrant A New Focus For Medical Research. Health Affairs. 32, No. 10 (2013): 1698–1705. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0052.
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