BESTAGEING · Biomarker Research Alliance for Diagnosing Heart Disease in the Ageing European Population

The ageing of the European population represents a rapidly rising social and economic challenge. Especially cardiovascular morbidity increases with age, but unfortunately, elderly patients are often difficult to diagnose due to confounding factors, leading to uncertainties in clinical decision making with huge impact on patients’ outcomes. Hence, there is an unmet need for novel biomarkers for more accurate diagnosis, risk assessment, and clinical outcome prediction for both acute and chronic cardiovascular diseases in the elderly.The BestAgeing consortium aims to improve this lack of diagnostic capabilities by developing and validating innovative omics-based biomarkers particularly for elderly patients – supporting healthy ageing in Europe. Our study design addresses the most frequent and severe cardiovascular diseases of elderly patients by incorporating the appropriate disease cohorts and biomaterials from European populations. We aim to develop new omics-assays to diagnose cardiovascular disease, estimate risk, and monitor the response to treatment in elderly. This is envisaged to enable a more stratified and economic delivery of medicine. We expect that BestAgeing will generate novel European medical technologies that can improve the efficacy and efficiency of our care for elderly patients, which will also impact on socioeconomic wealth in Europe.