title: Understanding changing risk factor associations with increasing age in adults.
abstract: With an increasingly older population, there is considerable interest in understanding the potential for risk factor interventions in order to prevent, postpone, or slow down the common diseases seen in older persons. However, it is often reported that the strength of association between risk factors and common disease outcomes decreases with increasing age. Actually, many different age-related patterns are observed. Understanding these patterns requires knowledge of issues related to the pathophysiology of aging, including age-related physiologic and metabolic alterations, detection and diagnosis of disease in the elderly, measurement of risk factors, sample selection, comorbidity, competing risks, selective survival, ceiling effects, and methods of analysis in aging populations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109, USA. gkaplan@umich.edu
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Kaplan
authors.forename: M N
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Haan
authors.forename: R B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Wallace
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015897:Comorbidity; D006299:Health Services for the Aged; D006801:Humans; D012307:Risk Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology