ABSTRACT
As background for our nal statement, we return full circle to the Global Burden of Disease Study that states that a majority of patients in the future will require treatment for age-dependent diseases, especially ailments of an aging brain and nervous system (see Section I). Currently, many of these diseases are untreatable, and in the case of aging, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States has yet to approve a single drug treatment. Indeed, according to the FDA, aging is not a disease to be cured. Thus, we are faced with a quandary since results of the Global Burden of Disease Study imply the opposite-many ailments of aging are diseases that need to be cured and will dominate healthcare in the twenty-rst century. In this chapter we go a step further and evaluate evidence showing that age-dependent diseases and aging itself share much in common and might be treated by common drugs. That is, the molecular pathologies associated with aging and age-dependent diseases seem to converge on the same point. According to this unied concept, advances in understanding or treatments for age-dependent disease such as Parkinson’s disease will likely apply to other ailments of aging and vice versa.
