
The Research Unit of Medicine of Aging is directed by Niccolò Marchionni, MD, who is Professor of Geriatrics at the Università di Firenze and, among other duties, is chair of the Geriatric Expert Group of the European Medicine Agency. The Unit is located in Careggi, the largest academic hospital in Tuscany, and houses the School of Geriatrics. Its clinical facilities (Intensive Care Unit for the Elderly and a Subacute Care Unit; day hospital and outpatients clinics) are fully equipped with spaces, staff, instrumentation and services necessary for clinical research. The Unit has an up-to-date biochemistry and molecular laboratory and a centre for geriatric epidemiology.
Investigators of the Unit have run a number of population- and hospital-based epidemiological and pharmaco-epidemiological studies, as well as of randomized clinical trials, in the broad field of clinical geriatrics. Topics covered in these studies include cardiovascular disease in old age, frailty, cognitive dysfunction and sarcopenia as key components in the pathway from disease to disability. Their findings have been published in major international journals. Scientific collaborations are active with many academic centres in the fields of geriatrics, clinical epidemiology and cardiology in Italy and in the US.