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individual, comparing scores in the exposed with the unexposed comparable age groups.
An earlier attempt to quantify these ageing criteria
were presented in a previous publication (Conard 1960).
In this report
several new criteria have been added with further statistical treatment
of the data.
,
Materials and methods
The study was hampered by the small number of people involved,
lack of vital statistics on the Marshallese people, the language barrier,
as well as uncertainty of exact ages in some of the older people,
The ageing criteria to be presented were recorded only in adults
(20 years of age and older), Data were recorded on 90 adults, 36 adults
in the originally exposed group and 55 in the larger comparison population,
The ages were reasonably well distributed except for a small number of
people greater than 60 yearsof age.
In selecting the criteria to be used the above mentimed difficulties
limited the extent and usefulness of those tests which require motivation
and co-operation on the part of the subject, Several tests were tried and
discarded for these reasons, including vital capacity and cardiovascular
response to two-step test. Also not included were several tests that were
difficult to quantify such as baldness, retinal and peripheral arteriosclerosis.
Several other tests were eliminated due to poor correlation with ageing such
as serum folic acid and Vitamin By, levels,
In this report 14 criteria of ageing are presented: four involve the
special sense organs (visual acuity, accommodation, arcus senilis, and
hearing loss); three involve neurological or neuromuscular function
(vibratory sense, reaction time, and rapidity of movement); three involve
the integument (skin looseness, skin elasticity, and hair greying); one test
of strength; one cardiovascular test (systolic blood pressure); and two
miscellaneous tests (serum cholesterol and body potassium). Two of the
tests required subjective evaluation on the part of the examiner (hair greyness and arcus senilis); 7 required varying degrees of motivation and cooperation on the part of the subject (visual acuity, accommodation, hearing
loss, vibratory sense, reaction time, neuromuscular function, and strength);
5 tests involved direct measurements (skin looseness, skin elasticity,
systolic blood pressure, body potassium, and serum cholesterol).
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Integument.
A special caliper with constant spring tension was
devised for skin examinations and the caliper and methods of skin examination
have been previously described (Conard 1960; Hollingsworth, Goro and
;