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Thyroid and ageing

There is a worldwide prolongation in the human life span and therefore a greater number of elderly citizens. At the beginning of this century, only about 4% of our population was over 65 years of age. In the 1970s, this proportion had risen to about 10% and is predicted to exceed 15% at the end of this century.

Ageing has been defined as a progressive loss of physiological capacity, which culminates in death (1). The decline, with age, of a number of physiological functions such as basal metabolic rate, cardiac index, vital capacity or glomerular filtration rate is well documented. The rate of functional changes seems to be slower in those with a very long life expectancy than in the average population. Most of these data come from cross-sectional studies and consider changes in the mean values of biological parameters in groups of subjects of different ages. However, there is