There are more people over 60 in the world than ever before, and this number is not expected to stop growing in the next 50 years. Population aging is currently more pronounced in North America, Europe and certain countries with a high development rate, but Southeast Asia, Africa and South America are joining the trend.
The root of this triumph in longevity is the result of the hygiene, sanitary measures and access to basic conditions to lead a dignified lifesays Dr. Mehmood Khan, longevity expert and CEO of the Hevolution Foundation, but it requires preparation for the different challenges that will emerge.
As Dr. Khan explains in a presentation at the second international summit on aging, held in Madrid, aging is biological, but also contextual. It not only depends on your genetics but also on where you age, the society you live in and your environment.. And in this environment there are a large number of variables that anyone can control, and decisions that can help age healthily.
However, other of these variables, such as physical location, socioeconomic status, or access from birth to Decent living conditions are not the result of decisions, but pure chance. And sometimes they determine much more than any decision that the person can make.
“Decisions can be made to extend longevity, but many people are born in certain conditions that do not allow those decisions to be made”
Therefore, Dr. Khan asks the questions:How can advances in longevity be democratized so that they are available to as many people as possible? How many extra years of independent living can you get? And what can society do to maintain an aging and healthy society?
These questions not only have a scientific answer, but also an ethical and economic one. The aging of the population not only represents a loss of quality of life, it also represents enormous expense, which is calculated in the order of trillions of dollars, greater than the gross domestic product of most countries. By actively fighting this natural process, money that would otherwise be spent on treatments for diseases derived from aging can be reinvested in society.
Slow but steady steps
Talking about reversing or stopping aging is not scientific nonsense. To give an example, Forty years ago, cancer was in a similar position to that in which aging is now. When cancer was diagnosed, it was a final diagnosis. In the words of Dr. Khan: «When I started medicine in 1976, very few students wanted to go into oncology. Why? Because it was considered palliative care. There was no treatment available for most patients. “When I was a resident in England, if you went to a patient and told them they had cancer, the next sentence was ‘There is no treatment.'”
Currently, 40 years later, half of cancers have a cure, and the vast majority can become chronic with a good quality of life for several years. This change was possible because, during these 40 years, governments have committed to research, the creation of institutes and the sharpest minds of our time have come together to solve the problem.
Taking this into account, There is reason to believe that, in 40 years, scientists will have been able to solve most of the molecular problems related to aging. “But it is important to be cautious and not offer checks that cannot be paid in the future.” Indicates Khan, «When cancer research began, no one promised that it would be cured in 2 years, in 5 or in 10. Making those promises would have been irresponsible, and would have meant a loss of trust on the part of society and subsequently, by governments and institutions. And it is very important not to fall into those mistakes with aging.
Getting to the heart of the biology of aging
The Hevolution Foundation has currently funded several research projects that try to solve molecular problems related to aging. Although to do this they take a somewhat transversal strategy. This means that, Instead of developing “anti-aging” drugs as such, they develop drugs for diseases that affect the same molecular pathways of aging.
An example of this strategy is research that is currently in the clinical phase for the treatment of hepatitis B. After an infection with the hepatitis B virus, around 10% of those affected become chronic carriers of the virus. That is, the virus remains within them in latent form. As no subsequent reinfections occur, the disease is considered cured, but recently it has been observed that The chronic presence of the virus can accelerate aging due to changes in epigenetics.
Following this logic, one of the keys to fighting aging is to ask what differentiates that 10% of people from the remaining 90%. If these are variations in the immune system, or genetic variants that these people have. And from having this knowledge, drugs can be developed that help the immune system or that reverse these epigenetic changes and allow the elimination of the virus in more than 100 million chronic carriers.
But not only that, the final twist is to try understand how the virus can age cells and if this same thing also happens, more slowly, in the rest of the population. If so, it is possible to think about using the treatments initially designed to cure hepatitis B in the general population, but in this case, to avoid this aging mechanism. Like this one, there are currently 4 other studies underway that try to avoid other fundamental components of aging.
As Dr. Khan indicated, it is important to be cautious and Do not think about great advances in the next 5 or 10 years, but understand that progress is coming, step by step. These advances are not designed to extend our life expectancy, but rather to ensure that the life we live is of the highest quality possible, and that the elderly people of the future can be independent until their last days.
