tailieunhanh - Báo cáo y học: "The next epidemic"

Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học Minireview cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: The next epidemic. | Comment The next epidemic Gregory A Petsko Address Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center Brandeis University Waltham MA 02454-9110 USA. Email petsko@ Published 31 May 2006 Genome Biology 2006 7 108 doi gb-2006-7-5-l08 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http 2006 7 5 108 2006 BioMed Central Ltd In about 50 years more than a quarter of the world will be over 65 years of age. It s even worse for some countries the projections are that at that time Japan and Germany could have 50 of their population in that category. The figure for the US is estimated to be about one-third. The fastest growing demographic segment in most developed nations is people 85 and older. We are witnessing something utterly unprecedented in human history an explosion of people well past their reproductive years. Evolution ceases to care about an organism when it has done its job of passing its genes to the next generation. As far as we know natural selection does not increase the fitness of an individual for later life indeed there is some reason to think that longevity may be harmful in an evolutionary sense. Older non-reproducing organisms consume resources that might better serve their younger breeding brethren. And chief among these resources is medical care because old age is a risk factor for just about everything bad that can happen physically. Cancer most types anyway and heart disease are just two of the conditions that afflict the elderly much more frequently than the young. Osteoporosis pneumonia and other potentially fatal infectious diseases are amongst the others and the list is a long one. But in almost no case is the deleterious effect of aging more dramatic than in the case of neurologic diseases. With the exception of a few rarer ones such as amyotropic lateral sclerosis Lou Gehrig s disease and Huntington s disease which do their damage earlier the incidences of Alzheimer s .