Search results for "Successful ageing"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
The signature of longevity in Sicily
2019
Ageing is a natural and physiological condition that is the result of compromised stress response, homeostatic imbalance and increased risk of developing diseases. However, if aging with good health and functions (successful ageing) and aging with disease and disability (unsuccessful ageing) depends on a combination of “positive features”, including genetic, epigenetic and phenotypic characteristics in combination with favourable environment, economic status and social involvement. In our study, we summarize some key points for the identification of a longevity signature, with a particular focus on long-living Sicilian individuals and centenarians. Analysing three different Sicilian cohorts…
The trouble with vulnerability. Narrating ageing during the COVID-19 pandemic
2023
In this paper, we have used the exceptional circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic as a window for investigating the ambivalent, stereotypical and often-incongruent portrayals of exceptional vulnerability and resilient self-management that define the self-constructions available for older adults. From the onset of the pandemic, older adults were publicly and homogenously presented as a biomedically vulnerable population, and the implementation of restrictive measures also raised concerns over their psychosocial vulnerability and wellbeing. Meanwhile, the key political responses to the pandemic in most affluent countries aligned with the dominant paradigms of successful and active ag…
Sexual activity and life satisfaction in older adults
2018
Aim Based on the concept of successful ageing and research reports on the benefits of maintaining sexual activity in mid- to late life, the purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between global life satisfaction and sexual satisfaction in adults older than 60 years. The study also analyzed the relationship between various forms of sexual activity (genital and non-genital) and both types of satisfaction. Methods Thirty-three men and 50 women (N =83) were interviewed by using two structuralized questionnaires. Global life satisfaction was measured with Diener's Satisfaction with Life Scale, whereas sexual satisfaction and preferences regarding various intimate behaviours…
HLA and KIR Frequencies in Sicilian Centenarians
2010
Several studies suggest that human longevity appears to be linked inextricably with optimal functioning of the immune system, suggesting that specific genetic determinants may reside in loci that regulate the immune response, as human leukocyte antigen (HLA) and killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) genes. It has been suggested that longevity is associated with positive selection of alleles (i.e., HLA-DR11) or haplotypes (i.e., HLA-B8,DR3) that confer resistance to infectious disease(s). On the other hand, the cytolytic activity of natural killer (NK) cells is controlled by activating and inhibitory cell-surface receptors, including KIR. The genetic diversity of the KIR loci with r…
Centenarian Offspring as a Model of Successful Ageing
2019
The rapid increase in global average life expectancy, observed during the last years, due to improvements in sanitation and medical care, pushes the scientific community to understand the basis of the ageing process. In particular, in order to improve the life quality of elderly people, current ageing research is focused on the identification of biological mechanisms involved in successful ageing, a complex process influenced by several factors, including genetic, environment, and lifestyle. Centenarians, i.e., subjects who have reached ten or more decades of life, escaping the common age-related diseases, are the leading exponent of successful ageing. However, the rarity of such exponents,…
Análisis del bienestar en la vejez según la edad
2008
Introduccion el objetivo de este trabajo es conocer como el bienestar evoluciona con la edad una vez llegados al periodo de la vejez y si existen cambios en esta variable tan relacionada con la calidad de vida. Material y metodo se aplico a una muestra de 169 personas de mas de 65 anos la Life Satisfaction Index (LSI) y las escalas de bienestar de Ryff; se realizaron regresiones lineales simples y curvilineas para ver su relacion con la edad. Resultados las correlaciones de Pearson mostraron que parece existir una relacion de disminucion, tanto del bienestar como indicador global como de tres de sus dimensiones, con la edad. Por otra parte, la satisfaccion vital muestra como mejor ajuste el…
Centenarians: An excellent example of resilience for successful ageing.
2020
Centenarians are remarkable not only because of their prolonged life, but also because they compress morbidity until the very last moments of their lives, thus being proposed as a model of successful, extraordinary ageing. From the medical viewpoint, centenarians do not escape the physiological decline or the age-related diseases or syndromes (i.e. frailty), but the rate of such processes is slow enough to be counterbalanced by their increased intrinsic capacity to respond to minor stresses of daily life (i.e. resilience). These new concepts are reviewed in this paper. Allostatic stresses lead to a chronic low-grade inflammation that has led to the proposal of the "inflammaging" theory of a…
Centenarians as a model to discover genetic and epigenetic signatures of healthy ageing.
2018
Abstract Centenarians are a model of successful ageing. The data favours the theory that, in order to live to 100, it is mandatory to inherit the right genetic variants from parents or acquire epigenetic variants through the environment. Therefore, the study of epigenetic signatures of healthy ageing is becoming an important aspect to identify the role of chromatin modification in ageing and understand how manage this fine-tuning system. So, according to the concept of developmental plasticity, establishment of a longevity phenotype requires a combination of stochastic and non-stochastic events that modulate the genetic substrate and leads to a different outcome. It can be concluded that ce…