The amount spent on a severely dependent person is 13,300 euros per year higher than that spent on a healthy elderly person

Frailty, understood as “a state of greater vulnerability to stress that leads to an increased risk of dependency, functional deterioration, hospitalisation and mortality among elderly people,” as affirmed by Mari Carmen Gómez Cabrera, who holds a PhD from the University of Valencia, is “a very important problem for society.” This is evidenced by the fact that the cost of supporting an elderly person with severe dependency is 14,000 euros/year, whilst a vigorous older person requires 700 euros/year.

 

According to the information provided by Dr Gómez Cabrera, frailty currently affects 2.5 million people in Spain. Furthermore, she explains that Spain is one of the five countries of the European Union with the highest number of people at risk of developing this condition. With this in mind, she emphasises the need to promote studies in this respect. “The returns on interventions in frailty are enormous, both for society and for the people who suffer from the unhealthy aging we wish to prevent,” she affirms.

 

Frailty can be reversed

Specifically, the research group Freshage in which Dr Gómez Cabrera works, has published a clinical trial in collaboration with the Hospital of La Ribera which shows the reversal of frailty thanks to physical activity. “We found that frail patients who followed a multi-component exercise programme for six months were able to reverse their frailty very significantly, while experiencing relevant anthropometrical, functional, cognitive, social and emotional improvements,” she explains.

 

Healthy aging will be the focus of Dr Gómez Cabrera’s presentation at the Longevity World Forum, the international congress that will be held on 13, 14 and 15 November in Valencia, and which will also be attended by other leading scientists dedicated to this subject such as María Blasco, director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), who has recently managed to increase longevity without genetic intervention on mouse models born with longer than usual telomeres, and Manuel Collado, head of the cancer and aging stem cell laboratory at the Health Research Institute of Santiago (IDIS), who has recently discovered that an active ingredient extracted from Digitalis or foxglove is able to selectively eliminate senescent cells.

 

Also present will be Pura Muñoz, researcher of the Spanish National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC), who has this year received the Jaume I Prize for Medical Research for her contributions on the molecular mechanisms of aging, and Manuel Serrano, a doctor and professor who is currently working on the ICREA programme of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine of Barcelona (IRB Barcelona) leading research into senescence and cellular plasticity; among others.

Ángel Barco

Full profesor at the Neuroscience Institute Alicante (Spain)

Dr. Barco initiated his scientific career investigating the molecular mechanisms of cytotoxicity by poliovirus at the CBM-SO (Madrid). After defending his thesis (1996), he conducted a brief postdoc in the same lab before moving to Columbia University in New York where he joined the group of Nobel laureate Prof. Kandel to work on the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory. In 2004, he moved to the Instituto de Neurociencias (IN, CSIC-UMH) in Alicante, where he currently holds a tenured position as Profesor de Investigación (Full Professor equivalent) at CSIC. His team investigates the role of activity-driven gene expression and chromatin modifications in neuronal plasticity, learning and memory. Over the last decade, the group made important contributions to the understanding of the relationship between epigenetic marks in the chromatin, gene expression and neuronal plasticity both in physiological conditions and in the context of intellectual disability and neurodegenerative disorders.

Mirka Uhlirova

Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research (CECAD), University of Cologne (Germany)

Mirka Uhlirova received PhD in 2004 from the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic, where she established techniques allowing functional genetics in non-model insects. During her postdoctoral time at the University of Rochester, USA, she described the context-dependent roles of stress signaling in tumorigenesis which helped to promote Drosophila melanogaster as a suitable model for cancer research. In 2008, she received the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and joined the CECAD Cluster of Excellence at the University of Cologne, Germany, as an independent group leader. Since 2013, she works there as a full Professor. Her lab investigates how stress signaling pathways orchestrate animal development and tissue homeostasis with focus on stress inducible transcription factors and their roles in the maintenance of epithelial integrity and function and mechanisms underlying interorgan communication in physiological and disease states.