In the past year, we have expanded studies on the clinical evaluation of health-disease relationships in the BLSA men. The goal is to understand the changing health status of an aging individual, and how disease interacts with normal aging to affect health. Until now, we have focused on the appearance of specific diagnoses without regard to the severity of the disorder. For the future, we must refine these definitions so that severity is considered. This will result in a more complete multidimensional functional definition of health. Current projects include (1) analysis of the distribution of disease in relation to age, and (2) analysis of the implications of elevated total white blood counts (WBC) by age on the distribution of diseases by age. At different ages a chronic elevation of WBC has different diagnostic implications.
