Scientists call for comprehensive classification of aging-related diseases

Scientists writing in a new policy paper are calling for the WHO and other national and international health organizations to band together to classify aging-related diseases in an effort to better understand and treat these conditions. These conditions — including cancers, cardiovascular disease, and dementia — are currently not tracked uniformly in billing codes, the authors argue, and are often separated by where in the body these diseases manifest. This, they write, makes it difficult to treat aging across the body or even find new treatments that target different sites, since aging often involves multiple conditions at the same time. They suggest a new system that includes codes organized by tissue type, disease type, as well as the severity of the disease. “To not classify diseases and stages comprehensively is arbitrary,” the scientists write.