NIA Renews Funding for AGS-Initiated "Bedside to Bench" Conferences with Grant for Second Series of Three Sessions

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) recently renewed funding for the AGS-NIA "Bedside to Bench" research conferences, with a $148,000 grant to cover a second series of three conferences.

"The NIA's generous support for this ongoing series sustains the collaborative effort by NIA and AGS to focus research on important but poorly understood problems of aging that are identified by observation of real patients by practicing physicians," says Stephanie Studenski, MD, AGS Research Committee chair and professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, who will head the 3-year conference program. The University of Pittsburgh is the grant recipient.

The first of the three 2 ½-day conferences, "Thinking, Moving and Feeling," is slated for this fall and will be led by Dr. Studenski. The conference will investigate whether cognitive, movement and mood disorders in older adults have overlapping causal mechanisms that can inform clinical prevention and management. A second conference, "Idiopathic Fatigue of Aging: Definitions, Epidemiology and Potential Mechanisms; Implications for Prevention and Treatment," led by Drs. Neil Alexander and George Taffet, is scheduled for fall 2008. The third, "Inflammation and Nutrient Metabolism," led by Dr. Dennis Sullivan, is planned for the fall of 2009.

The initial series of three annual "Bedside to Bench" conferences began in 2004 and ended last year. The first conference in the series, "Research Agenda for Frailty in Older Adults: Towards Better Understanding of Physiology and Etiology," took place in the winter of 2004 and was led by Dr. Linda Fried. The second, "Working Conference on Understanding Co-morbid Disease and Total Burden of Disease in Older Adults," convened in the spring of 2005 under the leadership of Dr. G. Darryl Wieland. The third, "Effects of Cognitive Activity on Cognitive Function in Late Life," took place in spring 2006 and was headed by Dr. Howard Fillit.

The AGS Research Committee, under the leadership of Drs. Douglas Kiel, Mark Supiano and Fried, conceived and initiated the conferences.

The new conference series will have an oversight board that includes leaders from the AGS, NIA and the conference program. The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society will publish summary reports of each conference.