Several clinical tools are available for identification of patients at risk of cardiac arrhythmias or its consequences that may benefit from interventions to reduce morbidity and risk of sudden death. These include noninvasive tests, such as a standard (more…)

Involuntary weight loss is the result of many chronic progressive diseases, often leading to diminished lean body mass, frailty, susceptibility to illness, and increased mortality. Various anabolic agents have been used to combat weight loss with mixed results. Similar to the frustration experienced by advocates of weight loss in the obese, none of the pharmacological appetite stimulants available at the current time have been uniformly successful in combating involuntary weight loss in the elderly population. (more…)

In elderly people there is a notable reduction in the capacity to produce new blood cells. Yet, unless there is substantial physiological stress, the number of circulating cells remains fairly constant. Quantitative deficiencies are only apparent when stress produces a demand that exceeds reserve proliferative capacity. Such a demand might occur during an acute infection or after cytotoxic chemotherapy. (more…)

Chronic diseases are not generally prevented by vaccines or cured by medication, nor do they just disappear. To a large degree, the major chronic disease killers—heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes—are an extension of what people do, or not do, as they go about their daily lives. (more…)