A recent commentary celebrates the granting of an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to sarcopenia, an important step in the lengthy formal definition of a disease. Sarcopenia is the characteristic age-related decline of muscle mass and strength - though many would say that it only counts as sarcopenia if that decline is significantly greater than normal, and that "normal aging" should not be treated. Hopefully those voices will decline in the years ahead. The carving up of degenerative aging into named conditions is a long, slow, and messy process. It is driven by regulation rather than any sort of common sense goal, as regulators refuse to approve treatments for aspects of aging that are not formally defined as a disease. Thus there is far less funding and interest in those fields, and consequently slow progress. Turning reality into a regulatory definition requires lobbying, extensive debate, and a great deal of money that would be better spent on other things. In the case of sarcopenia, it has taken more than decade of work to get to the point at which the formal definitions of disease start to crystallize into bureaucratic acceptance. So much wasted time.

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcsm.12147/full