Ivan Bautmans

Background

About Ivan Bautmans

My research is focused on untangling how inflammation affects muscle and aims at developing new strategies to combat inflammation and improve muscle performance in older persons. Previous and ongoing research includes • the identification how inflammation impacts muscle performance (as a pathway to frailty) in older persons in different settings including community-dwelling elderly, nursing home residents, and hospitalized geriatric patients, • the determination of how physical exercise can – besides combating muscle weakness - reduce inflammation and immunosenescence in the aged, with a specific focus on the dose-response relationships. With the Frailty in Ageing research group (FRIA)- an interdisciplinary research team of which I am the chair – I run a comprehensive research program to untangle the underlying mechanisms and to develop interventions for prevention and rehabilitation of frailty in the aged. Within the comprehensive research program, research lines with a Bio-Psycho-Medical focus and a Psycho-Socio-Policy focus can be distinguished (see also for details). Given the multidisciplinary character of Frailty, most of FRIA's research projects are conducted within both research areas. In fact, the overall strategy of FRIA is to conduct large research projects in which each senior researcher can elaborate his/her specific niche.