Healthy Ageing

As advances in immunity, inflammatory heart disease and cancer allow us to live much longer, degenerative diseases become a major issue.

This ranges from osteoporosis, causing 1 in 2 women and 1 in 3 men over 50 to have a bone fracture because of a decline in quantity or quality of bone, to cancers, which lie dormant and then grow in bone, sometimes stimulated by changes in bone metabolism. Garvan’s researchers lead the world in predicting and understanding diseases of bone by genomics, cellular genomics, advanced imaging technologies, and patient epidemiology.

Age-related degeneration of our nerves, brain and cells that control metabolism — leading to Parkinson’s disease, dementia, hearing loss, eye diseases and diabetes — remains one of the least well understood areas of medicine. These diseases appear to be influenced partly by our genes and proteins, and partly by inflammation and immunity reactions. Garvan’s researchers are bringing together these different disciplines to identify explanations, new diagnostic tests and treatments for Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, autism, anorexia and deafness.