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Can Research Help Prevent Frailty? PDF Print E-mail
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Vol XXXVI, Oct '08
Why do some elderly patients become frail and others go on to run marathons? National Institute on Aging researcher William Ershler, MD, will address this in his program, “Pharmacological Interventions to Prevent Frailty,” at the Fall Research Network Conference. “There are pathways that go astray; and if you right the ship early, you can prevent frailty,” he suggests, adding, “We have this hypothesis about what is going wrong in a global way, and it has much to do with the inflammatory pathway.”

Dr. Ershler and his colleagues have two research protocols in the process of being activated that will test two drugs for anti-inflammatory effects in elderly patients on the trajectory to frailty but not quite yet considered “frail.” He will talk about some of the challenges involved in conducting such research. He notes, “There are obstacles to just getting all the resources necessary to do these studies. Older people have a healthy degree of skepticism toward clinical trials; but we also have a group of older people who participate with a vengeance.” Nonetheless, he admits that—as researchers—he and his team “target people who are community dwelling and ambulatory for the most part; and we tend to shy away from people in nursing facilities.”

In addition to discussing his studies, Dr. Ershler will talk about why “some people lose their independence and end up in nursing facilities, especially those who don’t have specific diseases such as diabetes but still have become frail.”

See Dr. Ershler’s presentation on Saturday morning at 9:30 at the Research Network Conference.
 
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