Our research focuses on studying health in older age shifting from the traditional focus on single diseases towards multidimensional and longitudinal health trajectories. More specifically, we study the clinical, psychosocial and behavioral determinants of multimorbidity and frailty, as well as the interaction of these syndromes with older people’s use and needs for medical and social care services.
Our aim is to improve our understanding of health in old age from a person-centered perspective by considering its complexity and between- and within- individual heterogeneity. Our final goal is to provide the evidence needed by healthcare managers to deliver better care at a more appropriate time and place.
Most of the research that we do is based on data from the Swedish National study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K).
Aging Research Center, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society
Karolinska Institutet
SE-171 77 Stockholm
Tomtebodavägen 18 A, Widerström Building, floors 9 and 10
SE-171 65 Solna
Most of the research that we do is based on data from the Swedish National study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K).
The Health Assessment Tool (HAT), developed and tested in the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K), is a comprehensive index of biological age that could facilitate the early identification of those with health and functional disabilities and higher risk of rapid deterioration. HAT may also allow predicting medical and social care needs in older people at individual and community levels. Thus, HAT seems of particular interest in the primary care setting. However, exploring its external validity and possible use with real life data is essential before its widespread use in primary care. This project aims to assess the external validity and feasibility of HAT in the Swedish primary care setting by: 1) measuring its capacity to predict quality of life, unplanned hospitalizations, institutionalization, use of home care and death over one year, and 2) assessing the personal experience of the primary care staff in using HAT, as well as opportunities and threats for a successful implementation.
The project aims to provide evidence on the magnitude of older people’s contribution to informal caregiving and to gain knowledge of their particular health needs, through three research lines. The first research line will analyze temporal trends in informal and formal care reception and provision during the last three decades, with a focus on older people as informal care providers. The second will explore the association between caregiving in old age and negative health outcomes and potential underlying factors. The third will identify older caregivers most susceptible to being negatively affected by caregiving, and the stage when such consequences tend to occur. In the context of this project, an ad-hoc nationwide survey has been sent out to 31,000 Swedes older than 55 years, which will map, integrate and track the characteristics of caregivers, care recipients, and care contexts. This will be essential to adapt supportive services to the actual needs of older caregivers and prevent their health from being negatively impacted.
The overall aim of this project is to investigate the longitudinal trajectories and synergistic effects between multimorbidity and kidney function in old age. The final goal is to better understand the complex and dynamic evolution of people with multimorbidity and, hence, optimize their management and care. The specific objectives of this project are: 1) to quantify the concordance and explore sources of discrepancies between commonly used eGFR equations; 2) to characterize multimorbidity patterns in a community-dwelling population of older adults with a wide spectrum of kidney function, and to explore the associations between these patterns and future kidney function trajectories; 3) to study the association between eGFR and the evolution of multimorbidity, and to explore the moderating role of inflammation biomarkers on such associations; and 4) to study the synergistic interplay between chronic kidney disease severity and multimorbidity in predicting negative health outcomes linked to survival and avoidable or unplanned care use.
The present project aims to increase our knowledge concerning the dietary determinants of geriatric syndromes, such as multimorbidity and frailty, which are one of the major contributors to ill health among older adults. Contrary to what is the case for most pharmacological interventions, key health-related behaviours, such as maintaining adequate nutrition, could potentially exert powerful influences on these conditions and reduce the risk of death. Nevertheless, the dietary determinants of geriatric syndromes have seldom been researched in depth, which precludes the design of interventions to palliate the expected increase in age-associated health and social needs in the coming decades. Taking advantage of the well-characterized population-based Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K), we aim to fill some of these knowledge gaps putting geriatric syndromes and the biological mechanisms of aging at the centre, and studying them through the lens of dietary patterns, foods and nutrients.