The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology has just published a four-paper Series on Ageing and endocrinology, highlighting endocrine-related diseases and comorbidities as some of the most common age-related conditions and major impediments to maintaining good health in old age.
Implementation of the extension code XT9T in ICD-11 is not formal recognition of ageing as a disease. The WHO is recognizing ageing as a major disease risk factor and of the considerable public health problem posed by ageing-related diseases.
Big pharma might put more money into targeting the ageing process and extending human lifespan.
The Lancet papers discuss the physiological basis of endocrine-system ageing, the clinical implications of using testosterone to treat older men with hypogonadism, thyroid dysfunction during ageing, and the role of the endocrine system in frailty. Understanding how the endocrine system ages is paramount to realising the goal of healthy ageing—the door to which has at least now been opened by implementation of the ‘Ageing-related’ ICD-11 extension code.
World Health Organization created coding for Ageing-related disease
Progress in being able to classify, and thus treat, ageing as a disease was made recently when WHO implemented an extension code for ‘Ageing-related’ (XT9T) diseases—defined as those “caused by pathological processes which persistently lead to the loss of organism’s adaptation and progress in older ages”—in the latest version of the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-11. The new code, implemented as a result of a joint proposal submitted to WHO’s ICD-11 Task Force by researchers from the Biogerontology Research Foundation, the International Longevity Alliance, and the Council for Public Health and the Problems of Demography, can be immediately applied to relevant conditions listed in ICD-11 as well as to newly recognised conditions in the future. As ICD codes are prerequisite for the registration of all new drugs and therapies, the recognition of age as a pathological process, together with replacement of the ICD-10 ‘Senility’ (R54) code with ‘Old age’ (MG2A) in ICD-11, represents undeniable progress towards overcoming the regulatory obstacles that have thus far hampered the development of therapeutic interventions and preventative strategies targeting ageing and age-related diseases.
By 2050 over 2 billion people over the age of 60
According to WHO, 22% of the world’s population (roughly 2 billion people) will be over the age of 60 years by 2050, an increase from just 12% (about 900 million) in 2015; by 2020, people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years. This population ageing (a shift in the median age of a country’s population towards older ages) was first evident in high-income countries such as Japan, but low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) are now experiencing the greatest rate of change: by 2050, 80% of people older than 60 years are predicted to be residing in LMICs.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Well sound like it’s a step in the right direction at least. Now let’s get George Church and the FDA to accelerate that testing at Harvard . . .
Well, sound like it’s a step in the right direction at least. Now let’s get George Church and the FDA to accelerate that testing at Harvard . . .
Well, sound like it’s a step in the right direction at least. Now let’s get George Church and the FDA to accelerate that testing at Harvard . . .