How the COVID-19 pandemic might age us

How the COVID-19 pandemic might age us Nature - Infectious disease, loneliness and stress can affect cellular ageing, making us less healthy and shortening lifespans. Sohn, Emily nature

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we might feel we’re ageing faster than before. That’s not as strange as it sounds. Accelerated ageing can result from several factors, some of which have been highlighted by the pandemic. Exposure to infectious diseases, chronic stress and loneliness can all affect the ageing process, exacerbating health conditions and shortening lives.

As scientists become more adept at measuring ageing in the body, however, it is becoming clear that some people are remarkably resilient to these and other stressors — an observation that has fuelled research into how life experience might slow the ageing process. ...

It was clear early in the pandemic that older people, especially those with underlying medical conditions, are particularly likely to experience uncontrolled inflammatory responses called cytokine storms, as well as severe symptoms and death, as a result of COVID-19. This might be partly because, as people age, they are more likely to have high levels of inflammatory markers in their blood, Ferrucci says. One hypothesis, known as inflammaging, holds that this inflammation contributes to elevated risks⁷ not just for a severe case of COVID-19, but also for cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, dementia, cancer and other problems that become more common with age.

In COVID-19, inflammation seems to arise through several pathways, including cellular senescence, which, DePinho says, leads to a cascade of immune responses that include the secretion of cytokines and other inflammatory molecules. Cellular senescence has also been implicated in cancer, osteoarthritis and other ageing-related diseases. ...