Inflammaging and Disruption of Coagulation as Contributions to High COVID-19 Mortality in the Old

The burden of infectious disease falls most heavily upon the old. The attention given to COVID-19 has highlighted that point, though much of the media seems determined to avoid talking about the fact that near all mortality due to the condition occurs in the old and the cormorbid. It is nothing new, of course. Influenza kills tens of thousands of old people every year in the US alone, without much attention given to it. That the elderly suffer and die is old news. It is, however, old news that we should revisit in this era of revolutionary progress in medical biotechnology. The causes of aging and age-related mortality are amenable to treatment. The first rejuvenation therapies exist already, in the form of first generation senolytic treatments that destroy senescent cells.

COVID-19 mortality is strongly linked to inflammation. People with raised levels of chronic inflammation, such as the obese and the old, are much more vulnerable to suffering a runaway inflammatory event, a cytokine storm, and consequent severe illness and death. Today's open access paper is a novel consideration of this state of affairs that pulls in to this discussion what is known of the age-related dysfunction in coagulation. If a higher baseline inflammatory status leads to greater risk of severe inflammation due to infection, then, analogously, a greater baseline degree of dysfunction in mechanisms of coagulation leads to a greater risk of pathological disruption of coagulatory processes due t...

Source: Fight Aging! - June 9, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs