Facing Challenges in an Aging World [9th European Congress of Biogerontology]

Abstract

It is clear that the amount of people reaching old age is increasing worldwide. During last decades, the percentage of population aged more than 65 has been increasing. In fact, United Nations Organization reports indicate that the percentage of population aged more than 60 years was around a 10% in 1999 in the world but this increase will reach the 20% in 2050. Part of this effect is due to the increase lifespan of humans during last decades. It has been calculated that between 2045 and 2050 the lifespan of people aged 80 years will be around 10 years. It means that the number of nonagenarians and even centenarians will increase soon (United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs, World Population Ageing 2013). Currently Europe has reached a 20% of population aged more than 60 years and in 2050 this proportion will be around 30%. Taken into consi-deration the needs of this population, the sustainability of social and health systems needs to be revised. Several initiatives have been proposed to increase health and independen-cy in elderly people. Increasing healthspan in aged population is one of the most important challenges in the near future. For example, the program EIP-AHA (Europa Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing) of the European Union pursues three main objectives involved in the increase in health span in European citizens. It is widely known that life habits deeply affect the capacity of cells, organs and tissues. Sedentary life habits and the increasing consume of saturated fatty acids is severely affecting the risk to suffer cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes and metabolic diseases, all of them associated to chronic treatment during ageing. All sections (8) were also accompanied by different posters that have been associated to the different sections in this book. The reader of this book will then find a picture of the different fields included in the study of the biological ageing in different models from molecular to epidemiological aspects. I hope this information will be useful to, at least, understand how complex in the Biogerontology field and how much effort we have to do to increase longevity and, more importantly, health span during ageing.