MORE needs to be understood about the processes of ageing as the world's population gets progressively "greyer", the head of physiology at Trinity College Dublin said yesterday at a conference on ageing.
Prof Christopher Bell said the age structure of the population was changing as the size of families decreased, and as medical advances reduced mortality.
Knowledge about ageing was essential in order to devise strategies for preventing and treating diseases which were specifically associated with the elderly, including Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia.
The one day symposium, "The Neurobiology of Ageing", of the Physiology Society was organised as part of the international effort towards understanding how these diseases affected the ageing brain, Prof Bell said.
It was attended by more than 450 delegates.
"There are so many young people in Ireland it does not seem as important as in other EU countries, but as our population ages we will be in the same situation, particularly in the 85 plus category.
"There will be enormous implications in terms of cost. As long as these people can be kept in the community, relatively self sufficient, it is best for them and for the economy," Prof Bell said.
Dr Marina Lynch, who organised the symposium, said there was difficulty in researching the effects of ageing on the brain because researchers were limited to using animals. "We use animal models to establish what changes take place in the cells in the aged brain. Our objective is to reverse the problems that occur in ageing," she explained.
Dr Lynch, of the TCD Department of Physiology, said research had shown that the membranes of cells in aged animals had altered and become more rigid.
"We are attempting to alter that by feeding animals unsaturated fatty acids and we have had some success in reversing some age related difficulties."
Dr Gineke de Jong, of the department of animal physiology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said that small blood vessels in the brain of rats and humans had shown similar changes in ageing.
Her studies indicated that dementia was associated with the inability of the blood vessel lining to transfer nutrients from the bloodstream into the brain.
This hypothesis was based on changes that could be seen, where glucose could not he transported into the brain as easily as previously, she said, explaining that this affected brain function, resulting in dementia.