Study shows older US patients report more chronic diseases than the Irish

Middle-aged Americans (aged 57-64) reported all of the chronic diseases investigated in a new study more commonly than their English or Irish counterparts, who had a similar profile of chronic disease in middle age. Health inequalities, measured using educational attainment as a proxy for social class, were present in all three countries but were more severe in the US, according to a special six-article edition of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society (JAGS) on The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) being carried out at TCD. Older people (≥65) in England and Ireland had higher verbal fluency scores than…