The Lancet Neurology, Vol. 8 No. 11 p 969

 

a Department of Neurology and Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN 55905, USA

 

Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

 

The rapidly increasing elderly population poses a major challenge for future health-care systems. Many of the diseases of old age are neurological disorders, so neurological practice is likely to be disproportionately affected by an ageing society. However, as highlighted in two Reviews in this issue of The Lancet Neurology, there is a dearth of clinical trials among older people—indeed, very elderly patients are systematically excluded from many clinical trials. If we are to meet the challenge of caring for the rising numbers of elderly patients in the future, more good-quality trials in older people are needed to inform clinical practice.