Towards a biological geriatric assessment

Abstract

The aging process occurs gradually, is highly individual, with a high degree of inter and intra-individual differences. As such, within an aging population there is significant variation in regards to extent of age related disease and functional impairment. This variability between individuals is thought to be expressed as biological age. Currently, the comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA), a multidimensional, interdisciplinary diagnostic process is used to determine an individual's medical, psychological and functional capability at older age. However, while the CGA utilises well-established markers of physical and functional parameters, it does not include any molecular measures that i..