Aspetos hematológicos do envelhecimento

Rita Andrade; Elísio Costa; Alice Santos-Silva

Rita Andrade Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.
Elísio Costa Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal. Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.
Alice Santos-Silva Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal. Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.

Keywords: anaemia, aging, inflammation, hematopoiesis, renal disease.

Abstract

Aging and illness are not synonymous, but with aging, anatomical and physiological changes occur and make elderly most vulnerable to an onset of various diseases. Anaemia is a hematologic disease quite common in the elderly and has been subdivided into four types, anaemia by nutritional deficiencies, anaemia of chronic inflammation, anaemia of chronic kidney disease and unexplained anaemia.

Anemia has many adverse consequences in the elderly, increasing morbidity and mortality. Thus, the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of each type of anaemia allows to minimize these adverse consequences and to improve the quality of life in these patients.

The vascular, renal and hematopoietic changes, as well as, the wild chronic proinflammatory state, that are associated with the aging process, in combination with comorbidities and a genetic predisposition, favor the development of anaemia in this population.

In this paper we performed a review of the main etiologies associated with anaemia in the elderly, and discusse its pathophysiology.