National Institute on Aging's 50th anniversary: Advancing aging research and the health and well-being of older adults

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was founded in 1974 to support and conduct research on aging and the health and well-being of older adults. Fifty years ago, the concept of studying aging generated much skepticism. Early NIA-funded research findings helped establish the great value of aging research and provided the foundation for significant science advances that have improved our understanding of the aging process, diseases and conditions associated with aging, and the effects of health inequities, as well as the need to promote healthy aging lifestyles. Today, we celebrate the many important contributions to aging research made possible by NIA, as well as opportunities to continue to make meaningful progress. NIA emphasizes that the broad aging research community must continue to increase and expand our collective efforts to recruit and train a diverse next generation of aging researchers.

Gerontology through the Eyes of 21st Century Toxicology

Toxicants can cause cells to experience DNA damage, leading them to cellular senescence. Discovering mechanisms of cellular aging from birth to death will ease the process of understanding aging.

DOCTOR APOLINARY TARNAWSKI (1851-1943) - THE PIONEER OF NATURAL MEDICINE AND PHYSIOTHERAPY IN GERIATRICS IN POLAND

Doctor Apolinary Tarnawski (1851-1943) was undoubtedly the precursor of modern natural medicine, preventive medicine, and geriatric physiotherapy in Poland. Based on the experience gained from foreign scientific travel, own knowledge and experience, he developed an original method that he successfully used in his own clinic in Kosów. His assumptions proved to be timeless, and despite the passage of many years have not lost their relevance.

Anticipatory measure: Alex Comfort, experimental gerontology and the measurement of senescence

Ageing is routinely measured by counting the number of years lived since the birth of an individual but at least since at least the 1930s, the validity, precision and sensitivity of chronological age as a measure has been criticised across the biological and behavioural sciences of ageing. This quest that has been reinforced by the contemporary investment in the possibility of technologically manipulating the rate of ageing to delay the onset the age-associated diseases. This paper explores the epistemic, institutional and political conditions that led to the formulation, at the turhn of the 1970s, of Alex Comfort's (1920-2000) seminal proposal to measure human biological ageing rate. Drawing on published and archival sources, I argue that Comfort's suggested measure of ageing can be understood as a form of 'anticipation work', and should be understood as an effort to evidence, and to make present, the technological and social promises that Comfort linked to experimental gerontology.

[Old age in Medieval times]

Europe in the Middle Ages had no experience of gerontology as we know it today. The categorisation of old age was based on symbolic relationships with the world, inherited from Antiquity, and resulted in an ambivalent image of this age. Our knowledge in the area is derived mainly from fiction, from scholarly texts of a philosophical, moralising or medical nature, each interacting with the other. This observation is backed up by a moral treatise on the 'four ages of man' written in the 13th century by Philip of Novara.

Dismantling the Silence: LGBTQ Aging Emerging From the Margins

Historical, environmental, and cultural contexts intersect with aging, sexuality, and gender across communities and generations. My scholarship investigates health and well-being over the life course across marginalized communities, including LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) midlife and older adults, native communities experiencing cardiovascular risk, and families in China living with HIV, in order to balance the realities of unique lives in contemporary society. By probing the intersection of age, sexuality, and gender, my analysis is informed by both personal and professional experiences. With the death of my partner occurring at a time of profound invisibility and silence before HIV/AIDS, I found my life out of sync, experiencing a loss without a name. My life was thrust into a paradox: My relationship was defined by a world that refused to recognize it. This essay provides an opportunity for me to weave together how such critical turning points in my own life helped shape my approach to gerontology and how gerontology has informed my work and life. Reflecting on this journey, I illustrate the ways in which historical, structural, environmental, psychosocial, and biological factors affect equity, and the health-promoting and adverse pathways to health and well-being across marginalized communities. Although gerontology as a discipline has historically silenced the lives of marginalized older adults, it has much to learn from these communities. The growing and increasingly diverse older adult population provides us with unique opportunities to better understand both cultural variations and shared experiences in aging over the life course.

[ELIE METCHNIKOFF--THE FOUNDER OF LONGEVITY SCIENCE AND A FOUNDER OF MODERN MEDICINE: IN HONOR OF THE 170TH ANNIVERSARY]

The years 2015-2016 mark a double anniversary--the 170th anniversary of birth and the 100th anni- versary of death--of one of the greatest Russian scientists, a person that may be considered a founding figure of modern immunology, aging and longevity science--Elie Metchnikoff (May 15, 1845-July 15, 1916). At this time of the rapid aging of the world population and the rapid development of technologies that may ameliorate degenerative aging processes, Metchnikoff's pioneering contribution to the search for anti-aging and healthspan-extending means needs to be recalled and honored.

[Medicine for the elderly or science of old age? Max Bürger's contribution to geriatric medicine and gerontology]

The fact that, due to demographic changes, gerontology and geriatrics are gaining ever more importance gives rise to more questions regarding the history of the science of aging. Based on unpublished sources and relevant publications by Max Bürger, the doyen of gerontological research in Germany, our contributions trace the beginnings of age research in Germany. Our results confirm Bürger as the dominant expert in this field in the first decades of its emergence. Bürger was primarily interested in basic medical-scientific research, and less in clinical geriatrics. His scientific goal was not to establish a medicine for the elderly but a theory of life changes ("biomorphosis"). From the start, he saw aging as a physiological process--a view that is still valid today. His concept of "biomorphosis", however, did not catch on and reveals a constriction in Bürger's thinking, which was to some extent influenced by Hans Driesch's vitalism. Interdisciplinary approaches are noticeable in the natural sciences rather than the humanities or social sciences. Bürger's research was also influenced by the political system he lived in. During National Socialism, which Bürger joined--at least formally--in 1937, his research into labour economics and aging met with considerable interest in connection with the general mobilisation of resources. East Germany also had an interest in questions of labour productivity in old age and the extension of the working life, which meant that Bürger remained a sought-after physician and scientist up into the 1960s. As he grew older himself, Bürger's initially deficit-oriented view of old age gave way to a more positive presentation that attached greater weight to the resources of old age.

[Anti-aging medicine: notes on a socio-technical controversy]

After some decades of struggle, geriatrics and gerontology have become the legitimate sciences of aging. Today, their status is being questioned. In its short history, anti-aging medicine has taken root as a medical practice that questions how to address biological aging. In so doing, all medicine is questioned. Here, we explore in particular how this controversy is structured around the founding principles of the sciences of aging. Is there any basis for these questionings? How have they been treated by those who have received them? Taking a socio-technical viewpoint, it is worth considering that for geriatricians and gerontologists, the need to criticize anti-aging medicine also raises some important reflections about how the sciences of aging address their subject.

Karl Stern (1906-1975)

The forced migration process of German-speaking neurologists and psychiatrists under the Nazis during the 1930s and 40s is often preoccupied solely with "successful" concepts and therapeutic approaches. The case of German-Canadian neurologist Karl Stern (1906-1975) is very instructive, however, since the process of forced migration, for him, proved to be a transitionary process from his former cutting edge work in neuropathology and holist neurology in Germany to clinical psychiatry and the development of the new discipline of geriatric medicine in Canada.

A review of our roots: blacks in gerontology

The historical underpinnings in the field of gerontology rest on the contributions of scholars across a myriad of racial and ethnic backgrounds. With the increasing diversity of the adult population, there is a need to increase the number of researchers who study older adults from diverse racial and ethnic populations in general and Black elderly people in particular. Furthermore, it is important to document the participation of Black older adults in our earliest and continuing research efforts. Understanding the historical context and the foundational influence of Black scholars in this field is critical. To realize its humble beginnings, one must become aware of the contributions by Black scholars who have a vested interest in the aging process. With universal similarities and unique differences among older adults, there is a need to acknowledge the past and current scholarship of those who study the aging processes of Blacks while marveling over the future possibilities. The purpose of this review is to elucidate the legacy and current contributions, philosophies, and research of Black scholars in the field of gerontology. In addition, exploration of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used to establish national and organizational initiatives is reviewed. The impetus in initiating and continuing this work requires a "knowledge of our roots" while moving into the future. It is important to learn the history and significance of Black scholars in gerontology, the contributions of older Blacks, and appreciate the resiliency and marveled life course of this unique population.

Dr Adolf Lukas Vischer (1884-1974) and 'barbed-wire disease'

The Swiss physician Adolf Lukas Vischer described a psychiatric syndrome among prisoners of war, the 'barbed-wire disease' that follows a long-term incarceration and which involved boredom, confusion, clouding of consciousness and amnesia. Vischer first identified this as an important clinical issue. Later in life, he became one of the first geriatricians and gerontologists.

[Geriatrics from the 19th to the 21st century. 150 years of geriatric medicine: from increasing life expectancy to improving quality of life for the very old]

With the world further aging, geriatric medicine clearly became a necessity: in the 21th century many more people reach older ages by means of continued medical success in expanding lifespan. 150 years ago life expectancy was between 30 to 40 years, but today close to 800 million people are 60 yeas old or more. During the last century aging has been associated with decline and decay, but gradually more people lived ably and healthily in older ages. The expansion in life expectancy has become a synchronism of quality of life: the average 65 year old today is much healthier, physically and mentally fitter, than the average 50 year old 150 years ago, when Alois Alzheimer war born, a period when most nowadays existing geriatric institutions were envisioned and progressively realized over time. Today we strongly believe that a healthy life and, equally, the quality of life of the very old people can be extended with presently existing medical knowledge, based on research, environmental and behavioural changes, by postponing the onset and progression of fatal and disabling diseases and disorders. But very soon ethical considerations concerning all kinds of medical and technological solutions available to maintain or even improve the mental and physical functioning of dependant elderly people will engage our society when deciding how and at what moment in time to make the best decisions and allocate resources. Geriatric medicine will be further challenged by competing and demanding medical and economic needs, when marshalling resources to meet the growing demands of our society for improving care for the very old and often demented adult.

[Age and aging in Friedrich Hoffmann's medical practice]

Our research uses medical case histories from the practice of Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742) in Halle (Saale) to explore the following key questions: what in Hoffmann's view constituted the beginning of 'old age', and what treatment he offered to these older patients. When examining the notion of what Hoffmann considered the start of 'old age' to be, it is apparent that in certain cases he deviated from his theoretical categorisation, when confronted with the disposition, or ill-health, of individual patients. It is also evident that Hoffmann pursued a differentiated approach to the treatment of those he viewed as older patients, avoiding the prescription of medication in favour of dietary measures to encourage blood circulation. Furthermore, whilst on the basis of Hoffmann's 'Iatromechanical Theory', the use of the intellect in 'old age' was considered detrimental to health, our findings suggest that Hoffmann did not advise his mainly upper class patients to avoid this entirely, as he appreciated that they had to conform to societal norms.

Biological aging and social characteristics: gerontology, the Baltimore city hospitals, and the National Institutes of Health

The intramural gerontological research program in the National Institutes of Health underwent a substantial growth after its creation within the precincts of the Baltimore City Hospitals in 1940. This paper analyzes its development and the associated problems of its early years. Gerontologists aimed at improving the social and economic life of the elderly through scientific research. With this aim in mind, they conducted various investigations using the indigent aged patients of the Baltimore City Hospitals. Yet the scientists of aging, who hoped to eliminate negative social factors that might bias their research and heighten the confusion between pathology and aging per se, eventually stopped using these patients in the hospital as human subjects. Instead they sought educated affluent subjects in order to eliminate the impact of poverty. By doing so, however, they introduced a new source of social bias to their work, especially within the novel project begun in 1958, the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. This article thus examines the context of the development of gerontologists' research by analyzing their agenda, institutional environment, and research subjects in the 1940s and the 1950s.

[Saint Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology: achievements and prospects (towards the 20th anniversary)]

The article presents the results of the 20-years' long activity of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology founded to fulfill the basic and applied tasks in the sphere of gerontology and to integrate with medical practice new methods for preventing premature aging and age-related pathology by means of pharmaceuticals based on peptide bioregulators. Among the Institute main achievements are the scientific developments in the field of peptide regulation of aging, creation of a new medical domain--bioregulation therapy, and foundation of the Russian school of biogerontology. As a result of investigations, a key role of peptides in the regulation of aging process has been established, and a method of bioregulators complex application has been developed to increase organism resistance to various unfavorable factors and enhancement of human vital resource. At present 6 drugs and over 60 peptide bioregulators are widely used for prevention and treatment of many diseases. 9 new peptide preparations revealing geroprotective properties are submitted to the Russian Health Ministry to be registered as drugs.

[Gluttony, obesity and the metabolic syndrome in the context of the "seven deadly sins". Historical-theological, literary and art, mass media, political, philosophical, medical-psychological and geriatric aspects of the problem]

In this pape different aspects of problem of obesity are analysed.

[Commemoration. In honour of György Huszár (1911-2002) and Béla Berényi (1911-2005) -- on the centenary of their births]

100 years ago two outstanding teachers of the Faculty of Dentistry of the Semmelweis University (Budapest) were born. Dr. Huszár was a prosthodontist, an expert on metal and other dental materials, as well as a geroprosthodontist and medical historian. Professor Berényi was internationally recognized as an expert on salivary gland surgery and also orthognatic surgery. Both of them published several textbooks and many hundreds of scientific papers in Hungarian and in foreign languages. They were internationally recognized scientists, members of several national and international societies, as well as editors of national and international dental journals.