The New Science of Aging Can Predict Your Future

“most people don’t simply want to live until 110. They want to extend the amount of time they live free of serious disease, a concept known as health span. That’s why the most sensible approach is to reduce the toll of three major age-related diseases: cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. It may be less flashy, but it’s more attainable than ever. It’s estimated that at least 80 percent of cardiovascular disease cases, 40 percent of cancer cases and 45 percent of Alzheimer’s cases are preventable. Even with a long lag — these diseases can each … Read More

Olfactory Impairment and Mortality—The Crossroads of Neurodegeneration, Frailty, and Aging

“Ruane and colleagues1 address a pressing and timely issue: the intersection of olfactory impairment (OI) and aging-related outcomes. [..] The growth in the prevalence of older adults brings substantial societal, economic, and public health implications, making the detection and prevention of risks in this group essential. Olfaction appears to be a unique canary in the coal mine. [..] At 6 years, dementia emerged as the predominant mediator, accounting for 23% of the OI-mortality association, followed by frailty at 11% and malnutrition at 5%. By 12 years, however, the influence of dementia and malnutrition waned, leaving frailty as the sole significant … Read More

For John Green, It’s Tuberculosis All the Way Down

“[Green] I was really surprised to learn that tuberculosis is the deadliest infectious disease in the world. Even though I cared about global health, I would have bet my life that it was malaria or H.I.V., because those diseases get so much more attention. They still don’t get nearly enough attention, it must be said; people don’t pay enough attention in the rich world to problems in the global South. [..] It’s not easy to cure, but neither was my brother’s cancer. My brother had cancer a couple of years ago; it cost about 150 times more to cure than … Read More

Implausibility of radical life extension in humans in the twenty-first century

“In 1990, it was hypothesized that humanity was approaching an upper limit to life expectancy (the limited lifespan hypothesis) in long-lived populations, as early gains from improved public health and medical care had largely been accomplished, leaving biological aging as the primary risk factor for disease and death; the rate of improvement in life expectancy was projected to decelerate in the twenty-first century; and e(0) [life expectancy at birth] for national populations would not likely exceed approximately 85 years (88 for females and 82 for males) unless an intervention in biological aging was discovered, tested for safety and efficacy and broadly … Read More

Doing more cancer screening won’t reduce Black-white health disparities

“Why would more screening in both Black and white Americans reduce the mortality disparity between the two groups? What’s more, cancer screening actually stands out for its lack of racial disparity. The proportion of Black and white women having mammograms has been virtually identical for the past three decades (in fact, Black women currently have the test at slightly higher rates). Yet deaths from breast cancer are about one-third higher in Black women. For the past two decades, a similar pattern has been seen in colorectal cancer screening — equal rates among Black and white Americans — yet colorectal cancer … Read More

Different reasonable methodological choices can lead to vastly different estimates of the economic burden of diseases

“Landeiro and colleagues computed the economic burden of four diseases (cancer, coronary heart disease [CHD], dementia, and stroke) in England using consistent methodology and a broad definition of disease burden. This analysis is an important advance that will allow policy makers, researchers, and other stakeholders to assess the absolute and relative burden of these diseases in a meaningful way. The Global Burden of Disease also uses a consistent methodology for estimating the burden of many diseases across countries. However, its methodology focuses only on mortality and morbidity, which are evaluated comprehensively, but does not account for many other costs included … Read More

Toward a Comprehensive Measure of Drug-Attributable Harm

“While overdose deaths and related outcomes, such as the prevalence of substance use disorders (SUDs), are helpful indices, they fail to capture the broader dimensions of drug-attributable harm, including non-overdose deaths, chronic disease morbidity, and other conditions that cause people who use drugs to live in a state of less than full health. [..] The DALY [disability-adjusted life-years, the sum of years lived with disability and the years of life lost due to premature death] index captures the health burden beyond overdose deaths and SUDs, to encompass other morbidity and mortality attributable to substance use. Such outcomes could include conditions … Read More

Dollars and Sense: The Cost of Cancer Screening in the United States

“Colonoscopy is the dominant approach to colorectal cancer screening in the United States. Among people who are screened, two thirds get a colonoscopy. This fact is easy to miss in Halpern and colleagues’ 2021 data, which included 9.2 million people reporting colonoscopy and 9.8 million reporting fecal immunochemical testing (FIT). That ambiguity is explained by the distinct screening intervals (every 10 years for colonoscopy and annually for FIT), whereas there is no ambiguity about the difference in the resources required each year: $24 billion for colonoscopy versus $0.6 billion for FIT. Colonoscopy is clearly overused in the United States. It … Read More

Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission

“The number of people living with dementia worldwide in 2019 was estimated at 57 million and is projected to increase to 153 million by 2050. The proportion of people with dementia has increased over time in lower-income countries due to a greater percentage increase in longevity than in high-income countries. [..] There has been a rapid expansion in the volume of work on dementia prevention and risk reduction related to the 12 risk factors that were identified from the existing research literature and discussed in our earlier Lancet Commission reports in 2017 and 2020. The risk factors identified in our … Read More

Misdiagnoses cost the U.S. 800,000 deaths and serious disabilities every year, study finds

“Analyzing the nature of misdiagnoses also provides significant opportunities for solutions: The errors are many, but they are quite concentrated. According to the study, 15 diseases account for about half the misdiagnoses, and five diseases alone — stroke, sepsis, pneumonia, venous thromboembolism, and lung cancer — caused 300,000 serious harms, or almost 40% of the total, because clinicians failed to identify them in patients. “That’s a lot that you could accomplish if you cut those harms by 50% for just those five diseases — that would be 150,000 prevented serious permanent disabilities or death,” said [lead author of the BMJ … Read More