ESTIMATION OF THE AGING RATES OF POPULATIONS THROUGH THE PREVALENCE OF AGE-RELATED DISEASES

Ten prevalences of disease or functional affections due to degenerativ e processes that statistically show a significant age-dependent behavi our were taken as variables for a biological aging study of a populati on living in a district of Madrid. The cross-sectional procedure consi sted in grouping the disease prevalences by age decades and calculatin g aging by the vector-analytical mathematical method in which the age- dependent prevalence was the result of one of the total of 10 vector c omponents. The progressive accumulative increase of the vector distanc es from the origin as well as the distances among the vectors in relat ion to the population age was considered as biological aging. On the b asis of similar mathematical models the results were compared with tho se obtained from other populations in which different indicators were used; the results are concurrent, but show here a greater aging accele ration than when the population was composed solely of healthy individ uals, This is considered a logical consequence due to the sample compo sition. The presented procedure, focussed epidemiologically, can be us eful in comparing aging of populations.