[Vitamins, minerals and trace elements in elderly people].

In western industrial countries the proportion of elderly people is 15 to 20% of the total population with an increasing tendency. This fact is in contrast to a remarkable gap of knowledge on the process of ageing per se, nutritional influences, and particularly interrelationships with specific disease states such as multimorbidity of elderly people. It is obvious that the elderly people do require health care and social support to a much greater extent than other groups of a society. Also, multidisciplinary approaches are required in order to successfully perform research projects in this complex area. Finally, the economical significance of this particular problem of preventive medicine is tremendous. Micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and trace elements do play an important role in maintaining the metabolic homeostasis in elderly people as well as in the prevention of many age-associated diseases.