How does ageing differ between various groups? How much ill health can be prevented? Can mild cognitive problems predict who will later develop dementia?
“Looking to the future, these are three of the most interesting research questions at the Ageing Research Centre (ARC),” suggests Laura Fratiglioni, Professor of Geriatric Epidemiology and Director of ARC.
ARC is a national research centre established in 2000 with funding from FAS. Its task is to conduct interdisciplinary research on ageing. What keeps people healthy, and what causes illness in the elderly? The Karolinska Institute and Stockholm University jointly operate the organisation which has now also been chosen as one of ten FAS centres.
“We consciously choose to use the funding to engage senior researchers and this has proven a very successful approach,” says Laura Fratiglioni. “The researchers are sufficiently well-known internationally to obtain national and international research grants, but have not previously had a chance to work with these specific questions. So this is a strategy which we will continue.”
The research content will follow ARC’s established lines of research and build on various studies based on large in-house databases such as the Kungsholm project, SNACK and SWEOLD. The perspective is multidisciplinary and includes geriatrics, epidemiology, psychology and social gerontology.
“Health in the elderly is an end phenomenon, a result of what happened earlier in life, when we were born, in youth, in middle age,” comments Laura Fratiglioni. “We therefore apply a lifetime perspective in our research.”
Looking to the future, she believes three areas are especially interesting. The first deals with social factors on ageing such as the effects of memory training, medication and multiple illnesses in the elderly.
“Among other things we want to study whether it is possible to reduce the consequences of living with multiple illnesses. What is the role of medication and nutrition for quality of life in these elderly?”
The second research area is variations in health in old age. We live longer and longer, but are we living longer and better or longer and worse?
“The topic is not new, but we will be analysing data e.g. from the Kungsholm project to see how health in the elderly differs between groups.”
The third research area deals with ageing of the brain. Laura Fratiglioni believes the studies on “mild cognitive failure” are especially interesting.
“We have seen that only one-third of those who have this type of problem after age 75 go on to develop dementia. In others, the reason could for instance be medications, stress and depression. Is it possible to make prognoses to see who will develop dementia? This is an interesting question which we will be studying.”
Text: Sara Bergqvist Månsson
FAS centre funding: SEK10 million annually.
For further information: 
, www.ki-su-arc.se
