With the common phenomenon of aging of Western populations it is of utmost importance to follow time-dependent and age-dependent mortality patterns to predict future needs of Western health systems. Age-specific, gender-specific, and cause-of-death-specific mortality rates were extracted from the statistical abstract of Israel1 and include data for the period of 1975–2010; these are presented in Figure 1, separately for men (A) and women (B). Detailed age-specific causes of death data were available for the year 2009. Data presented were restricted to 5-year age groups starting at age 50, and for cause-specific mortality to the following age groups: 45–54, 55–64, 65–74, 75–84,
and 85+. Causes Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of mortality were separated into malignant diseases, acute myocardial infarction, other ischemic heart diseases, other forms of heart diseases, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, respiratory diseases, diseases of kidney, infectious diseases, all external causes, signs/symptoms and ill-defined conditions, and all other diseases. Figure Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 1 is MK-0518 solubility dmso similar to the one posted on the National Institute of Aging Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical website and
similar to data across the industrial world. The striking feature of this graph is that aging is a major log scale risk for most diseases, including the major killers: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. For example, while aging is a 100-fold risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) according to Figure 1, hypercholesterolemia is known to carry only a
three-fold risk for CVD. For each of the mentioned diseases, aging is a log risk greater than the most Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical important known risk factor for that disease. Figure 1 Mortality rates for major causes of death, by age, and gender (A: Males; B: Females), Israel 2009. What is the interpretation of this relationship of age and diseases? Based on Figure 1, those of us who investigate the biology of aging have hypothesized that unless we delay aging, we will not have a major impact on age-related Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical diseases. Even if all cardiovascular disease were to be eliminated, the expected impact would be an additional 2.87 years of life.2 Explaining this in part is that cardiovascular disease can be prevented by drugs, and patients have been saved by interventions such as coronary vessel Bay 11-7085 stenting and by-pass surgery. However, those “saved” patients are likely to die from diabetes, cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease (if not from a second cardiovascular event) within a couple of years.3 This is because we have not addressed the aging part, which continues to put us at risk for other age-related diseases. Unless we delay aging, we will mainly replace one disease with another. Thus, addressing aging overall and not just aiming to prevent a single disease, may lead to a longer health span, and may be more economically cost-effective as well.