ageing research

The Health Service Executive (ROI) has announced a new fund for research on ageing. This Research Awards Fund will seek to support high quality research projects in relation to positive and healthy ageing.

Submissions are invited for research under the following research themes:

• Participation
• Health and Wellbeing
• Security

Funding available

Physical activities such as walking help older adults lessen age-related decline in brain structure according to new research from Boston University School of Medicine. The researchers found the relationship between fitness and brain structure only in older adults, but not younger adults. "We found that higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness were associated with enhanced brain structure in older adults," explained study author Scott Hayes, assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.

Heartbreak can impair the immune system of older people and make them more prone to infections, researchers have found.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), physical and social environments are key determinants of whether people can remain healthy, independent and autonomous long into their old age. Creating age-friendly environments is therefore one of the most effective approaches to respond to demographic change. To support this approach, the AFE-INNOVNET thematic network on innovation for age-friendly environments (AFE) kicked off today with the support of the European CIP ICT PSP Programme and will run for two years.

Dr Eugene O’Hare, Queen's University Belfast, hopes his research may help provide a treatment for a disease which touches the lives of millions of people throughout the world – Alzheimer’s. He is collaborating with Senexis Ltd, a Cambridge- based drug-development company that is focused on discovering new compounds for the treatment of dementia. Read more here.