Impact Analysis of Coronavirus on Elderly Population in Worldwide and Kazakhstan

Covid-19 pandemics has affected the lives of all level population but brought an unprecedented threat to the health and daily life of the elderly population. Starting from Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, the virus spread to the world fleetingly, from 44 cases in January 2019 to 171,615,923 cases all around the world as of June 01, 2021, including Kazakhstan. SARS-CoV-2 positive patients had shown asymptomatic, mild, severe, and critical symptoms which brought to respiratory failure, shock, or multiorgan dysfunction in 5% of cases. The severity of the disease correlated with the older age and existing medical conditions, making the geriatric population more at hazard. A remarkable superiority of cases and deaths of Covid-19 was found within the elderly group, and particularly in those with pre-existing conditions and comorbidities, additionally to the immunosenescence and inflamm-aging. Studies done in the USA, Europe, and Asian countries showed a similar prevalence of the disease among adults and older people, but the mortality was extremely higher than in other age groups. Despite the similar prevalence, Kazakhstani researchers revealed a higher mortality rate (83.3%) than those countries. Therefore, the world, especially developing countries, needs additional advanced policies in vaccination policy, immediate testing, easy access to healthcare and information without ageist biases, income security, and more researches should be done that can address the issues, improve the lives and diminish the mortality of the geriatric population.

Survival-Span Method: How to Qualitatively Estimate Lifespan to Improve the Study of Aging, and not Disease, in Aging Studies

Lifespan analyses are important for advancing our understanding of the aging process. There are two major issues in performing lifespan studies: 1) late-stage animal lifespan analysis may include animals with non-terminal, yet advanced illnesses, which can pronounce indirect processes of aging rather than the aging process per se and 2) they often involves challenging welfare considerations. Herein, we present an option to the traditional way of performing lifespan studies by using a novel method that generates high-quality data and allows for the inclusion of excluded animals, even animals removed at early signs of disease. This Survival-span method is designed to be feasibly done with simple means by any researcher and strives to improve the quality of aging studies and increase animal welfare.

Factors That Motivate Older Adults to Participate in Research: Typologies and Implications

A key challenge for scholars who study aging is identifying a pool of research volunteers willing to participate. Toolkits and strategies acknowledge the differences in recruitment needed for older adults relative to younger adults, but there is little information about variations among older adult research volunteers. Based on a community sample of older adults age 60+, this study evaluates differences across seven specific motivators across three broad categories: values/altruism, personal growth/improvement, and immediate gratification. We then identify and evaluate four typologies of older adult volunteers based on the combinations of motivations the older adults in our sample identify as important to participation in research studies. Based on these analyses, we describe how our results might inform recruitment and retention practices in aging studies. Further, we will discuss how these results will help shape our technology-based reminder system with a greater understanding of motivations.

The Wake Forest IASDR: A Resource for Studying the Effects of Caloric Restriction on Health Outcomes in Older Adults

Over the past 25+ years, a focus of the Wake Forest Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) has been to study the consequences of and treatments for geriatric obesity. The Wake Forest OAIC has provided support for 18 clinical trials of caloric restriction (CR), with and without various exercise regimens, in 2,545 adults (71% women, 21% African American) with a mean±SD age of 67.5±5.9 years and BMI ≥27 kg/m2. A priority of the Wake Forest OAIC is to collate and store common data (e.g., demographics, physical performance, cognitive function), biospecimens (blood, muscle, adipose), and images (DXA, CT) from these trials in the Integrated Aging Studies Databank and Repository (IASDR; https://www.peppercenter.org/public/dspIASDR.cfm). This IASDR serves as a resource for the scientific community to foster new scientific questions and analyses. This symposium will provide an overview of CR trials and participants included in the IASDR and how the IASDR supports secondary analyses of CR by highlighting several secondary analyses using data and/or samples from the IASDR. Justice and colleagues examined the effect of CR on a geroscience-guided biomarker index using blood samples from the biorepository. Weaver and colleagues examined the effect of different exercise regimens on CT-derived muscle and bone measures during CR. Miller and colleagues pooled data from 11 trials to determine if CR-induced appendicular lean mass loss is associated with changes in physical performance. Finally, Hsieh and colleagues pooled data from eight trials to examine whether the effect of CR on gait speed differed by baseline BMI and inflammation.

Research on Aging: The International View From the Editors’ Desks

We review the scope, content, and focus of the peer-reviewed journal, Research on Aging (SAGE), publishing its 422nd volume this year. We will discuss how scholarship produced from researchers around the globe has changed over the years. Data on submissions, acceptance rates, and the important role of an international editorial board will be presented. The review process will be described, along with suggestions on how to increase chances of success when submitting original research. Although Research on Aging is sometimes considered to focus primarily on social gerontology, the scope in recent years has widened considerably, with manuscripts in aging studies published from such fields as economics, psychology, demography, public health, and public policy, as well as from sociology, and social work, among others. One of several special issues forthcoming in the journal will be described to demonstrate the possibilities for international impact.

Using Intersectionality Theory as a Lens in a Perspectives on Aging Class

The presenter will discuss strategies for using intersectionality as a theoretical lens in her Perspectives on Aging class in order to support students to understand the relevance of aging studies—including health and social disparities in aging—for their contemporary lived lives, as well as for prior generations. With this relevance established, the class also examines the significance and justification for the development of policy, such as Social Security legislation, as well as the need for aging-related career areas. The presenter will discuss the application of key course resources, including research that looks at aging in historic contexts, as well as content highlighting the importance of Age Friendliness and the diversity of career areas to support Age Friendliness and more optimal aging experiences overall. Examining historic roots of aging-related experiences in social contexts creates an informative platform for understanding experiences of aging in society today.

The Costs and Benefits of Choice: Family Managers in Directly Funded Home Care

Directly funded (DF) home care, or consumer directed home care, gives program users a budget to choose their own services. Set in the Canadian province of Manitoba, our study examines the local DF program “Self and Family Managed Care”, which does not allow program users to hire and pay a family member. Incorporating a disability lens into care and aging studies, we share findings from a qualitative study based on 24 semi-structured interviews with DF users. We focus on the experiences of family managers, that is, representatives acting as a decision maker for an older adult. About half of the family managers in this study care for people living with dementia or cognitive decline. We identify two main themes: 1) service flexibility in DF reduces caregiver strain, 2) family managers tend to hire agencies rather than individuals to avoid administrative burden. Our discussion highlights the costs of DF from the perspective of caregivers as administrative burden (financial paperwork, finding workers, choosing a ‘good’ agency), and the benefits as flexibility (choosing workers, trusting workers, setting schedules, assigning work). We also consider the goals of family managers to enhance quality of life and avoid long-term residential care, in contrast to younger self-managers who desire control and autonomy. We recommend that DF programs need to reduce administrative work for users, support users in making informed choices, and find better ways to support, acknowledge and value the work of family managers and substitute decision makers.

The Arc of Astrocyte Aging: Insights From scRNAseq

There is an urgent need to increase our understanding of brain aging and its role in neurodegeneration. While, evidence suggest that many hallmarks of aging, including epigenetic alterations and cellular senescence may be implicated in dementia, studying these and other progressive molecular changes in the brain remains extremely challenging. We asked whether something as simple as artificially aging cells in culture could recapitulate the changes that occur during organismal aging. To test this, we passaged human primary astrocytes and performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) of cells at passages 2-10. We observe that the sequential passaging—that terminates with a cluster of senescent cells—can be captured by manifolds and used to quantify a pseudo-time measure of progressive transcriptional changes. We identify genes underlying this transition and apply this signature of in vitro astrocyte passaging to scRNAseq from human and mouse brain aging studies, demonstrating associations with aging and neuropathology.

Standards and Guidelines for Graduate Programs in Gerontology and Geriatrics

Graduate programs in gerontology prepare students for advanced academic and/or applied careers in aging. Programs at this level offer greater depth, breadth, and increased emphasis on theory and research. Persons completing a master’s and/or doctoral degree in gerontology or aging studies have reached the level of “gerontologist” whereby they have completed the necessary coursework in the physical, psychological, social and built environment in order to understand the unique opportunities and challenges of aging in a scholarly manner. While the depth of treatment of each topic will vary across programs, each of the AGHE Core Competencies should be mastered at a level of “analyzation and evaluation” or higher on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. The current presentation addresses how the AGHE Standards and Guidelines for graduate programs in gerontology were updated as a competency-based curriculum that includes coursework, practicum, and a culminating project (e.g., thesis, comprehensive exam, and/or dissertation).