Georgia has one of the nation’s fastest-growing and fastest-aging populations with
a populace topping 10 million and nearly 11 percent of those individuals age 65 or
older.
“But there is no comprehensive approach here to the aging process,” says Dr. Carlos Isales, endocrinologist and vice chair of the MCG Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine.
He and his MCG colleagues are taking the first steps toward a center focused on healthy aging, and modeled after the National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers, offering both the latest treatment as well as translational research to find better therapies.
His goals include designation as a National Institute on Aging Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, named after the late Florida U.S. senator. There are currently 15 Pepper centers in the nation, many clustered in the northeast, and their mission is to increase scientific knowledge that enables older Americans to maintain or regain healthy independence.
Initial foci for the developing MCG center include both osteoporosis and related muscle weakness as well as Alzheimer’s, as scientists and clinicians here further explore the connection between a healthy – and unhealthy – body and brain in the dynamic aging process.
The initial team scope will include endocrinologists, rheumatologists, geriatricians, primary care physicians and neuroscientists. MDs will spend more time with PhDs and vice versa, to ensure maximum synergy. A geriatric training program that better enables MCG to educate the next generation of physicians for this growing population also will be pursued.
“There has been a fair amount of focus on Alzheimer’s in our state because of the understandable concern about that condition, but that is not the only loss we experience as we get older. We get sarcopenia, we often lose balance, mobility, independence,” says Isales, who for a quarter of a century has been treating and investigating the bone loss and related muscle wasting that can occur as we tick into our fifth and sixth decades.
“That’s why we want to take a comprehensive approach to the unique health care needs of the aging population,” says Isales.
“As we rightly say, children are not small adults, and older adults are not either.”
