COVID‐19 is an emergent disease of aging

  1. Didac Santesmasses
  2. José Pedro Castro
  3. Aleksandr A. Zenin
  4. Anastasia V. Shindyapina
  5. Maxim V. Gerashchenko
  6. Bohan Zhang
  7. Csaba Kerepesi
  8. Sun Hee Yim
  9. Peter O. Fedichev
  10. Vadim N. Gladyshev

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Abstract

COVID‐19 is an ongoing pandemic caused by the SARS‐CoV‐2 coronavirus that poses one of the greatest challenges to public health in recent years. SARS‐CoV‐2 is known to preferentially target older subjects and those with pre‐existing conditions, but the reason for this age dependence is unclear. Here, we found that the case fatality rate for COVID‐19 grows exponentially with age in all countries tested, with the doubling time approaching that of all‐cause human mortality. In addition, men and those with multiple age‐related diseases are characterized by increased mortality. Moreover, similar mortality patterns were found for all‐cause pneumonia. We further report that the gene expression of ACE2, the SARS‐CoV‐2 receptor, grows in the lung with age, except for subjects on a ventilator. Together, our findings establish COVID‐19 as an emergent disease of aging, and age and age‐related diseases as its major risk factors. In turn, this suggests that COVID‐19, and deadly respiratory diseases in general, may be targeted, in addition to antiviral approaches, by approaches that target the aging process.

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  1. Version published to 10.1111/acel.13230
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.15.20060095: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.15.20060095v1 on medRxiv