A life course approach to healthy ageing

The greatest challenge for research on ageing is to ensure that the health and independence of older people keeps apace with their increasing life expectancy. Ageing starts at the beginning of life, and is affected by biological and social processes acting across the whole of life. The new MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing is concerned with scientific discovery of these processes. We conduct research on the MRC National Survey of Health and Development, the oldest of the British birth cohorts. It is unique in having information, from birth to 60 years, on the health and social circumstances of a large representative sample of those born in England, Wales and Scotland in March 1946. The focus of our research is physical and cognitive capability, the ability to undertake the physical and intellectual tasks of everyday living. Capability, and its change with age, affects independence and quality of life. We study how childhood health, growth and development, changes in adult cardiovascular, respiratory and musculoskeletal function, and disease onset affect capability in later life. We investigate how changes in capability and biological function are influenced by genes, health and behaviour and by social, psychological and economic factors acting across life.

The grand challenge of research on ageing is to ensure that the health and independence of older people keeps apace with their increasing life expectancy. Ageing starts from the beginning of life and is affected by social and biological factors acting across life. The new MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing is concerned with scientific discovery of life course influences on normal and healthy ageing. Unit scientists conduct research on the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD), the oldest of the British birth cohorts, which is unique in having data from birth to age 60 years on the health and social circumstances of a representative sample (N=5,362) of those born in England, Wales and Scotland in March 1946, now poised to increase the elderly population. We investigate lifetime determinants and age-related change in physical and cognitive capability and the body systems on which capability depends. These include the independent, cumulative or interactive effects of developmental and genetic factors, changes in adult biological function and lifestyle, disease onset, and aspects of the lifetime social, psychological and physical environment. In the last year we started a new clinic data collection that will enable us to understand better the complex processes regulating cognitive ageing and physical frailty, cardiac and arterial structure and function, bone health, and body size, shape and composition. It will also enable us to study the consequences of biological ageing on wellbeing, and the individual and environmental factors that modify this impact. Our overall goal is to improve lifelong health and wellbeing by realising the scientific potential of the MRC NSHD as a world class, interdisciplinary and life course study of ageing. We are working to achieve this through our innovative scientific research and by developing MRC NSHD into a national resource on ageing with the e-science capability to manage the growth in collaborations and inter-cohort research. We are currently developing new ways of embedding knowledge transfer into our scientific programme, so that scientists and research users interact to ensure our findings are translated into opportunities across each phase of life to promote healthy ageing.