ArticleAge and ageing2022
Age and Ageing journal 50th anniversary commentary seriesWhy illness is more important than disease in old age.
Article in Age and ageing, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Nonspecific symptoms explain functional limitations in older adults better than disease-specific symptoms.European geriatric medicine · 2026Article
- Experiences and perceptions of unrecognised vision loss in the lives of community-dwelling older adults in Denmark: a qualitative study.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- Symptoms provide predictive information on daily functioning beyond signs and diseases in middle-aged and older adults, particularly those with multimorbidity.Age and ageing · 2026Article
- What Changes First? Mapping the Temporal Ordering of Age-Related Functional Decline across Domains Using 30-Year Longitudinal Data.Gerontology · 2026Article
- Participation in Healthy Ageing Centres in Bosnia and Herzegovina Is Associated with Increased Physical Activity, Social Interactions, and Life Satisfaction Among Older People: A Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of ageing and longevity · 2025Article
- Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Person-centered Practice Inventory-Staff for Brazilian culture.Revista latino-americana de enfermagem · 2025Article
- Article
- Microglia in brain aging: An overview of recent basic science and clinical research developments.Journal of biomedical research · 2024Article
- A causal loop diagram of older persons' emergency department visits and interactions of its contributing factors: a group model building approach.European geriatric medicine · 2023Article
- Implementing online group model building to unravel complex geriatric problems, a methodological description.BMC geriatrics · 2023Article
- Late-life depression and multimorbidity trajectories: the role of symptom complexity and severity.Age and ageing · 2023Article
- Understanding multimorbidity requires sign-disease networks and higher-order interactions, a perspective.Frontiers in systems biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Clinical reasoning and research in modern geriatrics often prioritises the disease concept. This is understandable as it has brought impressive advances in medicine (e.g. antibiotics, vaccines, successful cancer treatment and many effective surgeries). However, so far the disease framework has not succeeded in getting us to root causes of many age-related chronic diseases (e.g. Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis). Moreover, in aging and disease constructs alone fail to explain the variability in illness presentations. Therefore, we propose to apply the underused illness concept in a new way by reconsidering the importance of common symptoms in the form of a dynamic network of symptoms as a complementary framework. We show that concepts and methods of complex system thinking now enable to fruitfully monitor and analyse the multiple interactions between symptoms in such in networks, offering new routes for prognosis and treatment. Moreover, close attention to the symptoms that bother older persons may also improve weighing the therapeutic objectives of well-being and survival and aligning treatment targets with the patients' priorities.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.