[A new strategy of aging and geriatric epidemiology in Japan]

Global trends of increases in the aging population will continue in the 21st century, and geriatric medicine will be a most important field of medicine. Increase in the aging population naturally causes increases in numbers of patients with geriatric disease. Geriatric diseases are often chronic, slowly progressive, and hard to cure. Medical care expenses for the patients will expand dramatically. Therefore, the most important key for future geriatric medicine is prevention. For prevention, detailed data on normal aging process are required. At the National Institute for Longevity Sciences (NILS), a comprehensive longitudinal study of aging, the NILS-Longitudinal Study of Aging (NILS-LSA) started in November 1997. The subjects of this study were about 2,300 residents aged 40 to 79 years who were stratified random samples selected from the neighborhood area of the NILS. They are examined every two years at the NILS-LSA Examination Center. The third wave of examinations started in 2002. Examined variables were over 1,000, including clinical evaluations, medical examinations, anthropometry, body composition, physical functions, physical activities, psychological assessments, nutritional analysis and molecular epidemiology.