Aging ‘boomers’ cite need for gerontological researchby Heather WoolwinePublic Relations MUSC’s Center on Aging conducted its first Aging Research Day at The Citadel Alumni House March 26. The event is expected to be held annually. Recognizing an increasing need for gerontological research, center director Lotta Granholm, DDS, Ph.D., opened the day with startling statistics. “With the baby boomer generation moving well into their 50s and 60s, it is estimated that beginning this year, 10,000 people will turn 65 every day,” she said. “This means that the number of those over 85 will increase five-fold within 20 years. These older generations represent half of all hospital and doctors visits and drug prescriptions, and less than one percent of health professionals are trained in geriatrics. There is an obvious and significant need to expand this research area and recruit more health care professionals to study the aging process.” Granholm offered a number of reasons why the geriatric specialty has been largely ignored by the majority of heath care professionals including: no sense of urgency, little research done on the basic biology of aging, clinical trials aren’t conducted on the old, inadequate reimbursement, the field isn’t valued by those becoming health care pro-fessionals, scarcity of academic leaders, lack of public awareness, older adults are marginalized in Western society, Western society participates in age denial, and a lack of coordination in care and research involving older popula-tions. And while the picture may seem dismal, Granholm was excited by MUSC’s progress in the field as only one of 30 medical schools in the country to have a center for aging research. She cited the initiative taken by the university’s administration, its focus on faculty recruitment, and making aging research a university strategic plan focus area as reasons for increases in NIH funding and yearly progress since 2001. During his comments, MUSC President Ray Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D., outlined the university’s commitment to integrating research, education, and clinical programs related to the study of aging, and emphasized the idea of bridging the state’s geographic gaps to institute a statewide system that would create and promote holistic solutions for all of South Carolina’s aging populations. Sponsored by AstraZeneca Inter-national, a pharmaceutical company, and Axonyx, a biopharmaceutical company, the day included several well-known speakers in the aging research field, including Zaven Khachaturian, Ph.D., former director of the Office of Alzheimer’s Research for the NIH and former associate director for the Neuroscience and Neuropyschology of Aging Program for the National Institution on Aging; Sanjay Asthana, M.D., head of Geriatrics and Gerontology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School and director of Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center for the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, Wis.; and Donald Schmechel, M.D., director and principal investigator of the Joseph and Kathleen Bryan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Duke University. In addition to the speakers, poster and clinical sessions covering a
wide variety of aging topics and issues were also presented.
Friday, April 2, 2004
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