It Is Time for Senescience

Aging is the most impressive demographic phenomenon in human history. Due to fast medical developments, in addition to developments in the fields of transport, communication and economics, the world’s population is aging progressively and globally.
Humans have always reached extreme ages; it is not uncommon for historical individuals to have reached one hundred years of age. However, the pace of population aging today is much faster than in the past, and as a consequence of this, the percentage of persons reaching extreme longevity has increased beyond expectation. The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple worldwide in the next thirty years, with a projected 426 million octogenarians in 2050.
As physicians, we will see a substantial increase in patients with chronic conditions, multimorbidity, and polypharmacy. Moreover, more and more patients will be faced with progressive functional and cognitive decline. Physicians have begun to encounter this novel category of patients: patients who were not included in our textbooks, and have only recently come to be described. The significant improvements in medicine in recent decades means that young adult patients have been able to survive diseases which were considered fatal in the past. Additionally, we have been able to prolong the prognosis of diseases which are still, unfortunately, fatal. In this way, we have ‘created’ a new category of patients who will undergo sophisticated mini-invasive and complex interventions, will use more and more medicines and, possibly, will have advantages with the support of technology.
Therefore, the study of age-related disorders is of paramount importance, and we must embrace a new concept: SENESCIENCE. This is a novel term to indicate the scientific approach of age-related physiology and disease. [...]