Grant: Other: Canada-UK Aging Initiative

The number of elderly is increasing. More and more elderly are experiencing stressful events that they lead to hospital. One of the most important is fall leading to hip fracture. Even those elderly who are community dwelling and fit because of these events may become frail and consequently their quality of life is decreasing. We hypothesize that this stressful event is causing an alteration in the immune system leading to frailty. We want to study by which pathways the hip fracture is leading to alterations of the immune response resulting in frailty. We want to investigate the role of hormonal, nutritional, oxidative stress changes in these immune alterations. Ultimately, we intend to design interventions which will target these changes to improve the clinical outcomes and quality of life of elderly patients. This will have a great impact on the health and health delivery system of elderly.