Grant: Catalyst Grant: Analysis of CLSA Data

Our population is getting older. Whereas 40 years ago less than 1 in 10 Canadians were aged 65 years and older, by 2050 it is expected that this number will rise to every 1 in 4. Considering older adults are inherently more susceptible to acute illness and disease, this shift in age demographics will present an incredible strain on health care services. Clearly, there is a pressing need to develop tools that will allow our health care system to function more efficiently by helping identify those older adults that are at the highest risk of adverse health. One approach would be to follow specific biological markers (biomarkers) that are known to be related to a given disease or illness. However, because older adults are at risk for a myriad of conditions, it is probably not feasible to monitor them all. A better approach would be to use these biomarkers in tandem to gauge an individual's overall risk for adverse health; in a sense, whether they are aging in a healthy or unhealthy manner. We propose an improved method for characterizing an individual's health state that uses multiple health-related biomarkers to estimate how old someone is based on how healthy they are. If this "health-age" is greater than their chronological age, that person is likely at a greater risk of disease or illness. We will develop this method using data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study of Aging (CLSA) as it represents one of the most comprehensive biomarker databases for adults aged 45 to 85 years old.