Anorexia of Aging: Risk Factors, Consequences, and Potential Treatments

Abstract

Older people frequently fail to ingest adequate amount of food to meet their essential energy and nutrient requirements. Anorexia of aging, defined by decrease in appetite and/or food intake in old age, is a major contributing factor to under-nutrition and adverse health outcomes in the geriatric population. This disorder is indeed highly prevalent and is recognized as an independent predictor of morbidity and mortality in different clinical settings. Even though anorexia is not an unavoidable consequence of aging, advancing age often promotes its development through various mechanisms. Age-related changes in life-style, disease conditions, as well as social and environmental factors have the potential to directly affect dietary behaviors and nutritional status. In spite of their importance, problems related to food intake and, more generally, nutritional status are seldom attended to in clinical practice. While this may be the result of an “ageist” approach, it should be acknowledged that simple interventions, such as oral nutritional supplementation or modified diets, could meaningfully improve the health status and quality of life of older persons.

Maternal obesity accelerates rat offspring metabolic ageing in a sex‐dependent manner

“…Complex mechanisms are involved in the age‐related deterioration of food intake such as the decline in saliva secretion, as well as the decrease of the sense of smell and taste, changes in gastrointestinal function, chronic low‐grade inflammation and alterations in circulating hormones (Landi et al . ; Kummer et al . ).…”

Anorexia, functional capacity, and clinical outcome in patients with chronic heart failure: results from the Studies Investigating Co‐morbidities Aggravating Heart Failure (SICA‐HF)

“…In chronic renal failure, mortality risk in anorexic patients was 4 to 5 times that of those without anorexia . Thus, several studies mentioned that anorexia is one of the predictors of mortality in elderly subjects and in patients with chronic disease . However, there are few reports pointing out the association between anorexia and clinical outcome in patients with HF.…”

A Dedicated Nutritional Care Program (NUTRICARE) to reduce malnutrition in institutionalised dysphagic older people: A quasi‐experimental study

“…We used various levels of texture of high quality food, obtained through a specific process to meet the consistency, density, and viscosity required by each dysphagic person. With “high‐quality food”, we mean food that meets the characteristics of a person in terms of quantity, consistency, taste, variety and palatability, enabling to minimise weight loss (Landi et al., ). We informed nursing home physicians that our NUTRICARE programme did not include nutritional supplements, in the event these were already being provided.…”