Putting a strain on diversity

Human life expectancy is increasing on a global scale, but healthspan—the period of life free from age-associated ill health—is not improving at a comparable rate. This disconnect means that a greater proportion of the general population will spend a longer period of their life suffering from one or more debilitating age-associated diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, sarcopenia and various cancers. Understanding the processes underlying ageing and age-related diseases is therefore a major and pressing research challenge in biomedical research.