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This morning, we welcomed a delegation of 13 Finnish staff nurses, physiotherapists and social workers at Leyden Academy. Alongside their work, these healthcare professionals are all master students in Active Ageing at Karelia University of Applied Sciences in Joensuu, Finland. This week, they visit The Netherlands to obtain a broad view of how elderly care is organised in another European country, after their visit to Greece in 2016.

Marieke van der Waal, director of Leyden Academy, presented the master students with an overview of the current research and projects of our institute. Scientific staff member David van Bodegom then shared the latest insights in vital and healthy ageing, and invited the group to experience what it feels like to be older in the ‘ageing suit’. The study trip also includes visits to rehabilitation hotel Topaz Revitel and the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), who have an innovative collaboration in the field of geriatric rehabilitation, care organisation Florence in The Hague and a location of small-scale nursing home De Herbergier.

The Hague, the first city in the Netherlands to join the WHO Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities, will be hosting the International Age-friendly Cities Conference on innovation, health and active ageing from 2-4 October 2017.

This conference provides the opportunity to share ideas and experiences related to age-friendly cities and innovations in healthcare with participants from all around the world. Main themes are diversity, participation, accessibility, ageing, vitality and ICT, and will be addressed by several keynote speakers and in a number of workshops.

On Tuesday 3rd of October Joris Slaets  will contribute to the workshop on vitality. In order to improve quality of life and to add better health to longer lives, it is essential to work on the vitality of older people. How to improve vitality and mobility of older people will be the focus of this workshop.

Click here for more information and/or to register.

Each year, alternatingly the portrait of a vital older man or woman is chosen to represent our institute on communication outings (e.g. for website, brochures, banners etc.). For this year, from 11-11-2017 through 11-11-2018, we are looking for a man (from 75 years or older) who radiates a lust for life.

Procedure

• Photos can be submitted up to Monday 25 September 2017 to Yvonne Schinkel-Koemans at koemans@leydenacademy.nl.
• Several photos of multiple persons may be submitted.
• The management and communication department at Leyden Academy will select the ‘winning’ portrait.
• The picture is royalty-free and will be used exclusively by Leyden Academy.

What is important to 55+ citizens? What are their desires and ambitions? How can you better focus on their quality of life and engage older clients and customers in the development of new products and services? These questions are at the heart of the new course (Re)discover Seniors, that will take place in Leiden, The Netherlands on Tuesday 31 October and Wednesday 1 November 2017. The course is presented both in English and in Dutch and is part of the EIT Health Campus program. The course programme is based on the successful pilot ‘Wellbeing of Seniors’ in 2016.

Creating value for older individuals
The course is developed for professionals in both for-profit and non-profit organisations, looking for ways to reorient their organisations toward the growing demographic group of older adults. In 2050, almost one in three citizens in higher income countries will be over 60 years old. But the (re)discovery of older clients and customers is not just about marketing, says Joris Slaets, professor of geriatric medicine and director of Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing: “Knowing what matters to older citizens is crucial: what do they find most important in their lives, what are their desires, goals and values? Only then can we develop the innovative products and services that create value for older individuals and for our communities.”

Self-paced learning
(Re)discover Seniors is a blended course: after two days of lectures and workshops in Leiden, participants will join a self-paced programme on the online learning platform. The acquired knowledge and expertise can be applied in writing a business plan or future perspective, supported by expert coaches.

For more information on the programme, the instructors and practical details, please visit the course website. You can sign up here as well.

Today, for the fourth consecutive year, Leyden Academy welcomed twenty curious pre-medical students from Union College in New York. The students are currently touring the US, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands for an impression of how health care is structured in the various countries. In our country, the tour included visits to hospitals, a health centre, a centre specialising in physical and mental disabilities and even a presentation about the Dutch drug policy system.

At Leyden Academy, we discussed various topics related to vitality and ageing. Scientific staff member Lex van Delden asked the students about their associations with old age, and challenged the general image of older people as helpless and miserable. Research shows that despite frailty and impairments, older people in the Netherlands perceive their own health as quite well (report Shades of Grey), and rate their quality of life an 8 out of 10 (Leiden 85-plus study). Lex also introduced the Life and Vitality Assessment, a new tool developed by Leyden Academy to help measure the wellbeing of older individuals.

We also discussed how we can prevent or postpone so-called ‘diseases of old age’ and live longer, healthier lives by making small changes in our daily routines and environment – the subject of the MOOC Healthy Ageing in Six Steps. Finally, students Vanesha and Julian (see picture) got to experience what it feels like to be old, by wearing the ‘ageing suit’. Including shaky hands, unsteady feet and limited eyesight due to glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy – depending on the glasses you choose. A true eye-opener…

Since 2011, financial services organization Aegon has carried out the annual Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey, the largest global retirement survey of its kind. The survey, conducted in cooperation with the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and Instituto de Longevidade Mongeral Aegon, covers over 15 countries and 16,000 employed and retired respondents. The 2017 edition is entitled Successful Retirement – Healthy Aging and Financial Security and investigates the two elements necessary to prepare for an enjoyable retirement: wealth and health.

Promoting healthy ageing and financial security
The survey, released in June 2017, confirms that the gap between people’s expectations for retirement and the reality remains stark. It also shows that health and wealth in retirement are closely linked. Respondents view retirement as an active stage of life in which they wish to stay socially connected, involved in their communities, and continue to work in some capacity. This requires both careful financial planning and the maintenance of good health, the report concludes. In a world in which one in five people can expect to live beyond their 90th birthday, individuals, employers, the retirement industry, and governments, all have a role to play in promoting healthy ageing and long-term financial security.

Best practice with Leyden Academy
The 2017 Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey contains a case study in cooperation with Leyden Academy, highlighting the book A Guide to Growing Older – Let Your Environment Do the Work by Dr. David van Bodegom and Professor Rudi Westendorp. It provides a recipe on how to grow old and remain healthy, not from sheer discipline alone but through smart adaptations to one’s daily surroundings; at home, at school, at the office and on the road. The best practice can be viewed here.

To download the 2017 Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey, please visit the Aegon website.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart started composing and performing at the age of five. The child prodigy did not grow old: he died aged 35. According to researchers of Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, Mozart’s case is not unique. In an article in scientific journal Aging, they conclude that composers and writers who published their first creative work at a younger age were shown to have substantially shorter lifespans.

Almost three years difference
The researchers analysed the life expectancy of 1.110 composers and 1.182 writers born between 1400 and 1915 and the age at which they published their first creative work, as mentioned in the Oxford Companion to Music and the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Writers and composers who published their first work at a young age, turned out to have lower lifespans compared to those who published their first work at a later age. The difference in life expectancy added up to 2.5 years for composers and 2.7 years for writers, adjusted for sex, nationality and date of birth. In the study, only individuals were included that had lived at least up to the age of forty and had finished a first work before the age of forty.

Earlier peak, accelerated pace of aging
Generally, the longer it takes an organism to reach maturity, the longer it lives. The publication of a first composition or novel can be considered an expression of intellectual maturity, suggesting an underlying maturity of the brain and central nervous system. Researcher David van Bodegom of Leyden Academy explains: “The variation in human lifespans is fascinating: every individual ages differently, both physically and mentally. In a previous study, we found that Olympic athletes that have early physical peaks live shorter than those who peak at later ages. We can now conclude that there is also an association between intellectual development and longevity. Underlying biological mechanisms that help an individual mature earlier in life intellectually, come with the price of an accelerated pace of aging.”

The article Intellectual maturity and longevity: late-blooming composers and writers live longer than child prodigies by Maurits P.J. Hafkamp, Joris P.J. Slaets and David van Bodegom was published in scientific journal Aging on 30 May 2017.

11-22 September 2017
Heidelberg, Germany

This Summer School is a two-week program that covers all the necessary steps and tools to create your own startup.

Before the Summer School begins, participants are trained through the MOOC ‘Healthy Ageing in 6 Steps’. On site in Heidelberg, teams of three-to-five participants work jointly to overcome challenges brought in by companies or yourself that cover prevention and treatment of chronic diseases with modern and active lifestyles. euVENTION generates actionable results while qualifying participants to use state of the art innovation methods (design thinking, rapid prototyping, business modelling) for future healthcare related endeavors. At the end of euVENTION, participants will have run through all phases of a real-world innovation project.

Background: This Summer School is an initiative within EIT Health’s euVENTION. The overall goal is to improve prevention and treatment options for middle-aged (50-70-year-old) people, threatened by or suffering from chronic diseases (diabetes, coronary heart diseases and psychological disorders).
Target group: Master, PhD and MD students with different backgrounds are welcome. Furthermore, dedicated and motivated individuals can apply. They form cross-functional teams, with at least one person with a life science/medical, one person with a business, and one person with a social science background.
Challenges: Challenges are questions or issues raised by companies or by young professionals and scholars for which they would want a solution that results in an innovation (product or service).
Scholarships: Participation is free of charge. For travel and accommodation costs, you can apply for scholarships. The final amount will be determined after the selection process has finished.
Location: Marsilius-Kolleg, Heidelberg University’s institutional hub for interdisciplinary collaboration
Deadline for applications: 15 June 2017
Contact person: Mr. Raoul Haschke, raoul.haschke@zuv.uni-heidelberg.de
More information, registration and/or bringing in challenges: http://www.euvention.eu/
Partners: Heidelberg University; Heidelberg University Hospital; Heidelberg Startup Partners e.V.; Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing; Maastricht University; and SAP

Life expectancy is rising fast and the end of this trend is not yet in sight. Many people wonder to what extent the years that we have gained are enjoyable, since our health deteriorates as we get older. However, research shows that older people are more satisfied with their lives than is often believed, even when they experience health issues. In his PhD dissertation ‘Maintaining life satisfaction at old age in the face of physical decline’, Thomas Puvill researches the drivers of life satisfaction at old age and searching for answers to questions like: which factors separate older people with a low from older people with a high life satisfaction? And how do older people maintain their high life satisfaction despite physical decline?

Thomas will defend his dissertation on Tuesday 6 June at 10:00 AM in the Academiegebouw, Rapenburg 67-73 in Leiden, The Netherlands. Supervisors are Professor Rudi Westendorp (Copenhagen University) and Professor Joris Slaets (Leyden Academy). The dissertation is free to the public, registration in advance is not necessary. For more information, please visit the Leiden University website.

Glasgow, Scotland/Leiden, The Netherlands/Bern, Switzerland/Cork, Ireland/Copenhagen, Denmark, 3 April 2017 – A mildly underactive thyroid gland (subclinical hypothyroidism) is a common condition in older age, affecting up to one-in-ten older men and women. According to current guidelines, nine of every ten women with the condition receive thyroid hormone tablets, typically levothyroxine, which has become the most prescribed drug in the USA and the third most prescribed drug in the UK. A large 5-year European study now shows that the common treatment of this condition with levothyroxine provides no apparent benefits, calling for a re-evaluation of the guidelines. The main results of the study were launched today with a publication in The New England Journal of Medicine along with simultaneous presentation at the Endocrine Society meeting (ENDO 2017) in Orlando, USA.

European 5-year study of 737 older adults
A team of researchers from various European Universities, including Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, initiated the study following 737 older adults (average age 74 years) to determine if levothyroxine provides clinical benefits for older people with subclinical hypothyroidism. This condition has been linked to various health problems in later life, such as tiredness or lethargy, problems with the blood circulation, muscle weakness, slowed speed of thinking, and increasing blood pressure and weight, but it is also argued that the condition causes little harm. Half of the older adults in the trial were allocated to a placebo and half to levothyroxine, and participants were followed up for at least a year. The 5-year study found that treatment with levothyroxine tablets did effectively restore a normal balance of thyroid function, but did not give any symptomatic benefits. There was also no improvement of muscle strength, speed of thinking or any effect on body weight or blood pressure. Specific advices for the oldest old (over 80 years old) will be available next year, when TRUST results will be combined with an ongoing trial among over 80s.

No worthwhile benefits from levothyroxine treatment
Based on these findings, the team concluded that there is now convincing evidence that older people with a mildly underactive thyroid do not get worthwhile benefits from levothyroxine treatment. Professor David Stott from the University of Glasgow, who led the international study, explains: “Our aim is to significantly improve the health and well-being of older people with subclinical hypothyroidism, by resolving uncertainties about how best to manage this condition. Treatment with levothyroxine is common in clinical practice, but controversial. Our study concludes this treatment provides no apparent benefits for older adults and should therefore no longer be started routinely for this condition. An update of the guidelines is necessary.”

About the TRUST research project
Thyroid Hormone Replacement for Subclinical Hypo-Thyroidism Trial (TRUST) is a European research project of experts in ageing, thyroid problems and vascular disease, investigating current treatment practices for people who suffer from a mildly underactive thyroid gland. Professor David Stott from Scotland leads the study, along with collaborators from the Netherlands (lead Professor Jacobijn Gussekloo), Switzerland (Professor Nicolas Rodondi), Ireland (Professor Patricia Kearney) and Denmark (Professor Rudi Westendorp, previously Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing). The data handling was performed at the Robertson Centre for Biostatistics at the University of Glasgow (lead Professor Ian Ford). The study was funded by the European Union and medicines were provided free of charge by Merck KGaA. For more information, please visit the TRUST website.

The article Thyroid Hormone Therapy for Older Adults with Subclinical Hypothyroidism by David Stott, Jacobijn Gussekloo, Nicolas Rodondi, Patricia Kearney, Rudi Westendorp et al. was published by The New England Journal of Medicine on 3 April 2017.