Aging Healthily by Deterring Aging

"This is a much more effective approach toward  health than the traditional medical approach of waiting until people are sick and trying to cure their disease."
"Modern medicine has gotten pretty good at keeping sick people alive, but we are not very good at curing age-related disease. By treating one disease at a time, we haven't done anything to prevent all of the other age-related functional declines from happening in that person."
"I think you can make an argument that the extended period of time many older people live with multiple comorbidities currently is likely a direct result of the traditional medical approach of treating individual diseases, rather than treating biological aging."
"Obviously, there are several policy and social implications associated with an increase in healthy lifespans of 20 to 30 years. Retirement age and social security would need to be redefined for example."
"There are also questions about access and who will benefit first from such discoveries and how long it will take for them to become widely available, which can't be answered right now."
Matt Kaeberlein, biologist, professor, University of Washington

In this Oct. 28, 2014 photo, neurosurgeon Dr. John Sampson places a catheter into a glioblastoma patient at Duke in Durham, N.C. The risk of cancer increases with age. Shawn Rocco / The Associated Press

Dr. Kaeberlein envisions a time, perhaps two decades from the present, when a drug would be available to be taken over a period of six weeks or thereabouts to aid a person in their 60s to boost their immune system and protect against age-related diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and dementia. It is not foreseen that this therapeutic approach to treating old age would reverse age, much less bring eternal life; its promise lies in the expectation that it might produce a "healthspan", giving extra years to the individual, free of chronic age-related disease and disability.

This, according to gerobiologist Dr. Kaeberlein, who studies the biological mechanisms of aging, is what the health future for seniors may look like. Early research into such possibilities have already been conducted with worms, fruit flies and mice, even promising early results seen with the use of a drug called rapamycin in a study that involved pet dogs. The journal Public Policy & Aging Report, asked the question: Is aging a disease? when it devoted a full issue to the intriguing possibilities and the potential future of health care and the aging process.

At the present time, what transpires in medicine and human health is the treatment of individual diseases as they present themselves. It is well accepted through long experience that risks increase with age for cancers, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and neurological disorders such as Parkinson's. It isn't smoking, a heavy reliance on red meat in one's diet or environmental causes that threaten heart disease, but encroaching elder years.

Once a cancer is eliminated or heart disease made manageable, life expectancy sees an increase only on the order of three or four years, owing to the ongoing risk of additional types of diseases that continue to increase exponentially, with age. Slow down aging, goes this theory, then an increase of two or three decades in life expectancy could be anticipated.

 Rapamycin was identified in a soil sample from Easter Island in the 1970s, approved by the FDA to suppress the immune system to avoid rejection in transplant patients. It appears as well to boost immune function in healthy animals, perhaps by reducing inflammation which increases with age. In one study, it was discovered that rapamycin rejuvenated old mice hearts, resulting in significant improvements to cardiac function. Dr. Kaeberlein considers this drug the most promising of any to target aging.

It is not merely one disease but an entire litany of them associated with aging when chronic diseases take an increasing toll. By forestalling the aging process the potential is there to forestall not just one disease but many. "I know of no current intervention I would be willing to place a bet on", senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and professor of biochemistry, microbiology and immunology at the University of Ottawa, Douglas Gray, stated. "The motivations are genuine and admirable. I just don't buy it. The thing that excludes aging from being a disease is its universality."

"Never say never. But I don't see anything on the horizon that would signal something imminent that would allow us to prolong life for, say, 20 years", commented Researcher Jane Rylett of Western University, who investigates mechanisms regulating chemical communication in the nervous system, at her lab. She is also the scientific director for the Institute of Aging at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. "Even if there was a drug targeted at aging, it would affect different people in different ways."

Research funding to recognize biological aging as a risk factor in a disease is hard to come by. A mere fraction of one percent of the Alzheimer's research dollars -- as an example -- is spent on research on the role of aging in the development of Alzheimer's, even though biological aging accounts for over 90 percent of the risk of developing Alzheimer's. Another hurdle is regulatory where drugs approved by the FDA are approved on the basis of an "indication"; the drug must treat a named disease.

A woman exercises with wooden dumbbells during an event marking Respect for the Aged Day at a temple in the Sugamo district of Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, Sept. 19, 2016. The proportion of Japan’s aged has been rising steadily for decades, with U.S. Census Bureau data showing that last year more than one in four Japanese were over 65. Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg