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POLICY
People living on the street seem to age faster than the rest of the population.
When Serggio Lanata moved to San Francisco in 2013, he was stunned by its sprawling tent cities. "Homelessness was everywhere I looked," he says. Lanata, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), was also struck by similarities in the behaviour of some older homeless people and patients he had treated for dementia in the clinic. Now, years later, he is embarking on a study that will examine homeless adults for early signs of Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative brain disorders to better understand the interplay between these conditions and life on the street.
The work, which is set to begin next month, ties into an ongoing effort by researchers at UCSF to understand the biological effects of homelessness in older people. Since 2013, a team led by Margot Kushel, director of the university's Center for Vulnerable Populations, has followed a group of about 350 older homeless adults in Oakland, California, to determine why this group ages at hyper-speed. Although the participants' average age is 57, they experience strokes, falls, visual impairment and urinary incontinence at rates typical of US residents in their late 70s and 80s.
The research has drawn attention from politicians, economists and health-care providers across the country who are struggling to help the homeless and reduce their numbers. Although homelessness is a global problem, the situation in California is particularly acute. Nearly 70% of the 130,000 people without homes in the state are considered to be 'unsheltered, living on the streets or in locations unfit for human habitation, compared with just 5% in New York City. In the San Francisco Bay Area - California's...