Epidemiology of healthy ageing and the idea of more refined outcome measures.

摘要

Most of us reading this article will reach deep old age and would prefer to do so disease-free and fully functional (Fig. 1). As virtually all industrialized countries and many less developed nations are now facing rapid population ageing, healthy ageing is also an important topic for society. Unsurprisingly, the need for reliable evidence to inform policy on healthy ageing has spawned a large number of longitudinal studies of ageing over the past 15 years. This issue of the IJE profiles three of them-the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA), The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) and the Bambui Cohort Study of Ageing-and in our editorial we explore ideas for potential next steps in this field of research.