F. Bersani, Italy
Sapienza University of Rome Department of Human NeurosciencesModerator of 1 Session
The concept of “biological ageing” or “premature senescence” in relation to psychiatric diseases originally arose from the evidence that severe mental diseases (such as Major Depressive Disorder, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) are associated with early mortality and with increased risk of developing certain senescence-associated medical comorbidities. Over the last years the research on the field has been stimulated by studies exploring the role of molecular underpinnings of senescence, i.e. molecular pathways at the peripheral and central level which are thought to have a causal role in, or to reflect, the ageing processes, in mental diseases. In the present symposium recent developments on the topic emerging from clinical and preclinical data will be presented and critically discussed.
Presenter of 2 Presentations
Live Q&A
W0086 - Frailty Index as a Clinical Measure of Biological Age in Psychiatry
ABSTRACT
Abstract Body
The concepts of “accelerated biological ageing” and “premature biological senescence” have been receiving increasing attention in relation to psychiatric diseases, with clinical, epidemiological and molecular observations suggesting that psychopathological processes can have significant relationships with aging-related phenomena. The deficit accumulation model postulates that the individual’s biological age and functional status is related to the amount of health deficits accumulated over time and that one’s biological age can be estimated by summarizing health deficits in a single continuous variable, the so-called “frailty index” (FI). In this presentation it will be discussed the possibility that the FI, which condenses information arising from multidimensional evaluations, represents a potential clinically-useful macroscopic indicator of biological age which can add relevant information to the measurements currently implemented in the study of accelerated biological age in psychiatric diseases.