Housing markets and independence in old age: expanding the opportunities

This report highlights the benefits of specialised private retirement accommodation and recommends a number of simple policy changes at no cost to the public purse to help increase its supply and address the challenges of housing an ageing population.

Sexuality in older age: essential considerations for healthcare professionals

This review describes the fact that many elderly people enjoy an active sex life and examines the evidence against the general perception of an 'asexual' old age. It offers an overview of the evidence for healthcare professionals who had not previously considered the sexuality of their older patients. It also describes some of the sexual problems faced by older people, especially the difficulties experienced in disclosing such problems to healthcare professionals. It examines why healthcare professionals routinely avoid discussing sexual problems with older patients, and how this can be improved. It also offers some recommendations for future research in the area, as well as a word of caution regarding the temptation of over-sexualising the ageing process.

Processing speed, executive function, and age differences in remembering and knowing

A group of young (n=52, M=23.27 years) and old (n=52, M=68.62 years) adults studied two lists of semantically unrelated nouns. For one list a time of 2 s was allowed for encoding, and for the other, 5 s. A recognition test followed where participants classified their responses according to Gardiner’s (1988) remember–know procedure. Age differences for remembering and knowing were minimal in the faster 2-s encoding condition. However, in the longer 5-s encoding condition, younger persons produced significantly more remember responses, and older adults a greater number of know responses. This dissociation suggests that in the longer encoding condition, younger adults utilized a greater level of elaborative rehearsal governed by executive processes, whereas older persons employed maintenance rehearsal involving short-term memory. Statistical control procedures, however, found that independent measures of processing speed accounted for age differences in remembering and knowing and that independent measures of executive control had little influence. The findings are discussed in the light of contrasting theoretical accounts of recollective experience in old age.

Inulin-type fructans in healthy aging

Worldwide, the population is aging, with estimates of 1 billion people aged 60 y or over within the next 20 y. With aging comes a reduction in overall health and increased morbidity and mortality due to infectious disease. Mortality due to gastrointestinal infections is up to 400 times higher in the elderly compared with younger adults. Recent studies have shown that the gut microbiota changes in old age, with an increased number of bacterial groups represented in the predominant elderly gut microbiota. This change in species "evenness" coincides with parallel changes in immune function, diet, and lifestyle and may contribute to disease susceptibility and severity in old age. The intestinal microbiota may thus be identified as an important target for improving health through reduced disease risk. Here, the application of prebiotics, especially the inulin-type fructans, and synbiotics (prebiotics combined with efficacious probiotic strains) will be discussed in terms of microbiota modulation and impact on disease risk in the aged population. Recent human intervention studies have confirmed the microbiota modulatory capability of the inulin-type fructans in the elderly and there is some evidence for reduced risk of disease. However, there is a need for more and larger human intervention studies to determine the efficacy of prebiotics in the elderly, particularly studies that take advantage of recent high resolution analytical methodologies like metabonomics, to shed light on possible prebiotic mechanisms of action.

Understanding prebiotics in infant and childhood nutrition

Prebiotics and probiotics are ingredients in the diet that strengthen beneficial microbes in the gut, especially bifidobacteria. This article discusses their effects on health and their use in infant formula and foods for children and adults. They may also have benefits for the elderly population, since bifidobacteria are known to decrease with old age.

Therapeutic modulation of microbiota-host metabolic interactions

The complex metabolic relationships between the host and its microbiota change throughout life and vary extensively between individuals, affecting disease risk factors and therapeutic responses through drug metabolism. Elucidating the biochemical mechanisms underlying this human supraorganism symbiosis is yielding new therapeutic insights to improve human health, treat disease, and potentially modify human disease risk factors. Therapeutic options include targeting drugs to microbial genes or co-regulated host pathways and modifying the gut microbiota through diet, probiotic and prebiotic interventions, bariatric surgery, fecal transplants, or ecological engineering. The age-associated co-development of the host and its microbiota provides a series of windows for therapeutic intervention from early life through old age