Estimation of the aging rates of populations through the prevalence of age-related diseases.

Ten prevalences of disease or functional affections due to degenerative processes that statistically show a significant age-dependent behaviour were taken as variables for a biological aging study of a population living in a district of Madrid. The cross-sectional procedure consisted in grouping the disease prevalences by age decades and calculating aging by the vector-analytical mathematical method in which the age-dependent prevalence was the result of one of the total of 10 vector components. The progressive accumulative increase of the vector distances from the origin as well as the distances among the vectors in relation to the population age was considered as biological aging. On the basis of similar mathematical models the results were compared with those obtained from other populations in which different indicators were used; the results are concurrent, but show here a greater aging acceleration than when the population was composed solely of healthy individuals. This is considered a logical consequence due to the sample composition. The presented procedure, focussed epidemiologically, can be useful in comparing aging of populations.