Concepts of Geriatric Bioscience and Clinical Applications

Description

Bioscience, often known as "Natural History," "Natural Philosophy," and "Natural Theology," is a discipline of natural science concerned with the structure and behaviour of living organisms. The steady accumulation of DNA mutations in the genome of somatic cells has long been attributed to ageing. However, the advanced equipment required to begin evaluating this idea and its implications has only lately been established. Understanding how molecular biology informs clinical presentations of ageing and age-related illnesses such as osteoporosis, diabetes, osteoarthritis, frailty, cancer, and dementia is becoming increasingly relevant for physicians who treat older people and for ageing researchers. The most common illnesses in industrialised nations are cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegeneration, and the greatest risk factor is age. The ageing process is detrimental to fitness, but it can evolve as a result of natural selection's declining force at later ages, due to extrinsic hazards to survival: ageing can then occur as a result of accumulation of mutations that lower fitness at later ages, or natural selection in favour of mutations that increase fitness in the young but at the cost of a higher subsequent rate of ageing. The book concludes that the intricate link between population ageing and lifespan is not set in stone, and that it may be influenced by well-designed decisions.