The Feasibility and Necessity of a Revolution in Geriatric Medicine
Abstract
(ISSN 2638-1311)
OBM Geriatrics is an international peer-reviewed Open Access journal published quarterly online by LIDSEN Publishing Inc. The journal takes the premise that innovative approaches – including gene therapy, cell therapy, and epigenetic modulation – will result in clinical interventions that alter the fundamental pathology and the clinical course of age-related human diseases. We will give strong preference to papers that emphasize an alteration (or a potential alteration) in the fundamental disease course of Alzheimer’s disease, vascular aging diseases, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, skin aging, immune senescence, and other age-related diseases.
Geriatric medicine is now entering a unique point in history, where the focus will no longer be on palliative, ameliorative, or social aspects of care for age-related disease, but will be capable of stopping, preventing, and reversing major disease constellations that have heretofore been entirely resistant to interventions based on “small molecular” pharmacological approaches. With the changing emphasis from genetic to epigenetic understandings of pathology (including telomere biology), with the use of gene delivery systems (including viral delivery systems), and with the use of cell-based therapies (including stem cell therapies), a fatalistic view of age-related disease is no longer a reasonable clinical default nor an appropriate clinical research paradigm.
Precedence will be given to papers describing fundamental interventions, including interventions that affect cell senescence, patterns of gene expression, telomere biology, stem cell biology, and other innovative, 21st century interventions, especially if the focus is on clinical applications, ongoing clinical trials, or animal trials preparatory to phase 1 human clinical trials.
Papers must be clear and concise, but detailed data is strongly encouraged. The journal publishes a variety of article types (Original Research, Review, Communication, Opinion, Comment, Conference Report, Technical Note, Book Review, etc.). There is no restriction on the length of the papers and we encourage scientists to publish their results in as much detail as possible.
Publication Speed (median values for papers published in 2023): Submission to First Decision: 5.7 weeks; Submission to Acceptance: 17.9 weeks; Acceptance to Publication: 7 days (1-2 days of FREE language polishing included)
Special Issue
Fundamental Interventions: Revolutions in Geriatric Disease
Submission Deadline: January 31, 2017 (Open) Submit Now
Guest Editor
Michael Fossel, MD, PhD
1. President of Telocyte (http://www.telocyte.com)
2. Retired Clinical Professor of Medicine, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI, USA
Research Interests: human aging; telomeres; telomerase therapy; age-related diseases; Alzheimer's disease
Photo by courtesy of University of Kansas Medical Center.
About This Topic
Dear Colleagues:
Geriatrics is entering a revolutionary era. This journal will introduce both the rationale for, and the upcoming innovations of, that new era. Until now, geriatrics has been a largely descriptive endeavor, focusing on medical and nursing interventions which alleviate but do not cure or prevent age-related disease. This has been due both to our shallow understanding of the aging process and to the limitations of small-molecule therapies. In this issue, we will introduce both a deeper understanding of disease and the burgeoning and innovative therapies that are coming into clinical use. This deeper understanding, coupled with novel, biological interventions, promises to take geriatrics into an unprecedented era, in which we can both prevent and cure age-related diseases.
This deeper understanding encompasses not merely genetics, but regulatory epigenetics; not merely small molecules, but “large molecular” approaches, such as gene therapy; not merely biologically active molecules, but human cells themselves, such as stem and other cell therapies. Perhaps most importantly, we have finally begun to understand the role of changing gene expression, along with the key modulatory role played by telomere shortening, in human age-related disease. None of these concepts or their related interventions are simple or straightforward. They demand a sophisticated understanding of biology, pathology, genetics, and clinical medicine. On the other hand, it is far too easy to use a facile assessment of these topics, making unwarranted claims based on little knowledge and less thought. The literature is replete with invalid and unreliable conclusions, yet the underlying promise remains: we are on the verge of successfully intervening in age-related diseases, with efficacy and compassion.
We encourage articles that reflect this insight, that portray the mechanisms, and that evaluate the actual potential of 21st century medicine as we finally advance upon the most difficult of human diseases, those of geriatric medicine.
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted through the LIDSEN Submission System. Detailed information on manuscript preparation and submission is available in the Instructions for Authors. All submitted articles will be thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process and will be processed following the Editorial Process and Quality Control policy. Upon acceptance, the article will be immediately published in a regular issue of the journal and will be listed together on the special issue website, with a label that the article belongs to the Special Issue. LIDSEN distributes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License in an open-access model. The authors own the copyright to the article, and the article can be free to access, distribute, and reuse provided that the original work is correctly cited.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). Research articles and review articles are highly invited. Authors are encouraged to send the tentative title and abstract of the planned paper to the Editorial Office (geriatrics@lidsen.com) for record. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office.
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Publication
The Feasibility and Necessity of a Revolution in Geriatric MedicineAbstract Nowadays, geriatrics is mainly the treatment by palliative methods of the disorders that characterize senile decay. This is perfectly compatible with the prevailing view that aging is the inevitable result of multiple degenerative processes that can only partially be treated as they are in themselves inevitable and irreversible.
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