Age-Related Change in Mobility: Perspectives From Life Course Epidemiology and Geroscience.

ABSTRACT: Mobility is the most studied and most relevant physical ability affecting quality of life with strong prognostic value for disability and survival. Natural selection has built the "engine" of mobility with great robustness, redundancy, and functional reserve. Efficient patterns of mobility can be acquired during development even by children affected by severe impairments. Analogously, age-associated impairments in mobility-related physiological systems are compensated and overt limitations of mobility only occur when the severity can no longer be compensated. Mobility loss in older persons usually results from multiple impairments in the central nervous system, muscles, joints, and energetic and sensory physiological systems. Early preclinical changes in these physiological systems that pr

SUBMITTER: Ferrucci L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4978365 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature