By Eleanor Garth – Longevity.Technology –
Leopoldina issues policy paper urging integration of geroscience into national healthcare and research infrastructure.
Germany’s National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina has published a detailed policy paper calling for a profound shift in medical research and practice – one that recognizes aging not merely as a backdrop to disease, but as the central modifiable factor driving most chronic conditions. Framed as both a scientific and societal imperative, the document proposes that healthcare systems should be redesigned around the biology of aging, with preventive geromedicine playing a leading role in tackling the growing burden of multimorbidity in older adults.
The paper, Health-Extending Medicine in an Aging Society – Prospects for Medical Research and Practice, gathers the expertise of thirteen leading researchers and clinicians primarily from Germany, with contributors also based in Singapore, the US and Denmark. It recommends a suite of reforms, including national biobanks, aging biomarker validation, and a coordinated effort to translate research on aging mechanisms into safe, scalable interventions. These proposals are not made in isolation; they reflect what the authors describe as “the imminent challenge” of an aging society in which, by 2035, one in three adults in Germany will be over 65 – and where more than half of that population already experiences multiple chronic conditions.
