Nature News on NCD Mortality

This piece in Nature news features this Lancet study on mortality risks.  The attentive reader will notice a few important things from the story.  

First, the good news:

"The latest study is the first to investigate the change in NCD-mortality across countries. It finds that, from 2010 to 2019, the probability of dying from an NCD before the age of 80 fell in 152 countries for women and 147 countries for men".

Secondly, The the not so good news:

"Despite these gains, more than half of the countries saw slower declines in the 2010s compared with the previous decade. “Around the beginning of the millennium, we saw significantly lowered mortality rates, but despite political attention suddenly over the last decade, things are not doing as well as before,” says Majid Ezzati, a co-author and global-health researcher at Imperial College London".

Then the political prescription from the not so good news:

"Ezzati says that the slowdown between 2010 and 2019 could be because of underfunding, poor targeting of vulnerable populations and a lack of clarity in public-health priorities. In many countries, proven interventions to reduce chronic-disease deaths, such as treatment for high-blood pressure and diabetes and cancer screening, have stagnated or even declined since 2010, despite being low-cost and highly effective, he says. Government restrictions on tobacco and alcohol have also lost momentum in many regions, he adds".

And then the most important news you would know is coming if one attends to the reality that biology constrains healthspan:

"High-income countries such as the United States and Germany saw a decline in improvements because of a rise in neuropsychiatric conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, other dementias and alcohol-use disorders. “Mortality from Alzheimer’s disease and dementias increased in 65% of countries, and in 90% of high-income countries,” says Le Nevez. Accelerated funding and the implementation of programmes addressing these conditions is needed urgently, she adds".

I do not know why this is the case, but if I had to select a scientific journal that appears to be the most antiquated when it comes to acknowledging, let alone attending to, the realities that aging impacts disease and health, it is The Lancet.  Whether it be cancer or COVID-19 mortality, so many studies in even the most prominent scientific journals could be much more informative and helpful if they functioned within a perspective informed by insights from the biology of aging.  When the original intellectual presuppositions of studying the infectious disease mortality responsible for early-life mortality are transposed to the study of the chronic diseases more prevalent in later life it constrains our ability to see what is really at play.  And this is so important because it will skew our understanding of what ought to be done to remedy the situation.  Namely, addressing the most significant risk factor for NCD- aging itself. 

Cheers, 

Colin