Approved Research

Healthy life expectancy of older adults and its determinants

Lay summary

Although people worldwide are living longer, healthy life expectancy (HALE) was not increased proportionally, leading to a slight increase in the number of years living with disability. Previous studies using the Sullivan method, have estimated HALE under varied geriatric syndromes, such as frailty, sarcopenia, and middle cognitive impairment, at al. However, mediators of HALE under varied geriatric syndromes were little known.

In this proposal, using validated methods to analyze the large prospective database of UK Biobank, we aim to (i) examine transitions in geriatric syndromes, such as frailty, sarcopenia and middle cognitive impairment and related factors; (ii) estimate total life expectancy(LE) and living years with specific geriatric syndrome among older adults aged ! 60 years, and explore determinants(including environmental, lifestyle factors, genetic variants) of LE and HALE and (iii) estimate healthy working life expectancy(HWLE) and its determinants among adults aged ! 50 years.

Our findings can provide important implications for public health, such as target population for screening geriatric syndromes, and interventions to facilitate healthy aging