Abstract
Major changes in social welfare, economic conditions and medical knowledge over the last 60 years have pro-duced a demographic shift in the population. More individuals are living longer, and in a decade there will be more people over 65 than infants under 5 for the first time in history. Taking the analysis beyond mere numbers reveals that older indi-viduals are now physically more active than their forebears and travel more widely. This provides a greater opportunity for encountering infectious agents which could present a considerable problem. Older individuals are more susceptible to infection and do not respond as well as younger people to vaccination because of an age related decline in immunity, a state which has been termed immunosenesence. This decline is not uniform and some older individuals show a greater de-cline in their immune response than others. In this review we have sought to consider who are the 'at risk' individuals, how they might best be treated and when.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 56-63 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Open Longevity Science |
| Volume | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2012 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.Keywords
- Frailty
- Healthy ageing
- Immunosenescence
- Rejuvenation
- Reversion
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ageing
- Geriatrics and Gerontology
