Abstract
Population aging poses a serious challenge on a broad spectrum of issues for both developing and developed countries. For people in the fields of aging research and geriatric medicine, the critical tasks include elucidating the relationship between aging and disease development and finding models of care for the elderly that transcend conventional clinical practices and health‐care service delivery systems intended for the general population. It is now recognized that distinctions should be made between processes accompanying aging that may be adaptive and those that contribute to increased disease risks.1 Also, as comorbidities are very common in the elderly and often share underlying pathological processes, the approach to managing individual diseases separately needs to be reconsidered. All this relies on the integration of research findings on aging with understanding disease processes and how it can be translated into preventive and therapeutic strategies as well as clinical practice. That is where geroscience comes in. Aging biology research has generated a great deal of knowledge about cellular and molecular features and mechanisms underpinning aging. Meanwhile, geriatric medicine has evolved largely as a subspecialty of internal medicine, with a focus on care for the elderly but without much consideration given to how the aged body is different from its younger counterpart.2 Geroscience strives to bridge the gap between the two fields and facilitate the application of insights gained from basic biology aging research in the prevention and management of diseases commonly seen in the elderly. Geroscience is a relatively new concept, even more so in China. Its acceptance requires interdisciplinary team‐building and institutional reorganization, which has yet to happen in China. Therefore, when we talk about geroscience infrastructure building in China, it is not that conscious efforts have been made toward that end, but rather how progress in geriatric medicine and aging research achieved in recent years has the potential to be channeled into a geroscience‐oriented pursuit towards better understanding of mechanisms of aging and its contribution to age‐related chronic conditions in the future.
Highlights
Population aging poses a serious challenge on a broad spectrum of issues for both developing and developed countries
When we talk about geroscience infrastructure building in China, it is not that conscious efforts have been made toward that end, but rather how progress in geriatric medicine and aging research achieved in recent years has the potential to be channeled into a geroscience‐oriented pursuit towards better understanding of mechanisms of aging and its contribution to age‐related chronic conditions in the future
Efforts need to be made to expand and improve medical and senior care facilities, long‐term solutions would pref‐ erably come from strategies that can help prevent or slow down age‐related illnesses, which in turn would depend on a clear under‐ standing of processes of aging and risk factors that predispose indi‐ viduals to disease development so that effective intervention can be attempted and greater health span can be achieved
Summary
Population aging poses a serious challenge on a broad spectrum of issues for both developing and developed countries. When we talk about geroscience infrastructure building in China, it is not that conscious efforts have been made toward that end, but rather how progress in geriatric medicine and aging research achieved in recent years has the potential to be channeled into a geroscience‐oriented pursuit towards better understanding of mechanisms of aging and its contribution to age‐related chronic conditions in the future.
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