COVID-19: A Challenge to Physiology of Aging
TL;DR: To achieve a proper balance in public health approaches to COVID-19, gerontologists should be involved in crosstalk between virologists, therapists, epidemiologists, and policy makers.
Abstract: The death toll of the current COVID-19 pandemic is strongly biased toward the elderly. COVID-19 case fatality rate (CFR) increases with age exponentially, its doubling time being about 7 years, irrespective of countries and epidemic stages. The same age-dependent mortality pattern known as the Gompertz law is featured by the total mortality and its main constituents attributed to cardiovascular, metabolic, neurological, and oncological diseases. Among patients dying of COVID-19, most have at least one of these conditions, whereas none is found in most of those who pass it successfully. Thus, gerontology is indispensable in dealing with the pandemic, which becomes a benchmark for validating the gerontological concepts and advances. The two basic alternative gerontological concepts imply that either aging results from the accumulation of stochastic damage, or is programmed. Based on these different grounds, several putative anti-aging drugs have been proposed as adjuvant means for COVID-19 prevention and/or treatment. These proposals are reviewed in the context of attributing the molecular targets of these drugs to the signaling pathways between the sensors of resource availability and the molecular mechanisms that allocate resources to storage, growth and reproduction or to self-maintenance and repair. Each of the drugs appears to reproduce only a part of the physiological responses to reduced resource availability caused by either dietary calories restriction or physical activity promotion, which are the most robust means of mitigating the adverse manifestations of aging. In the pathophysiological terms, the conditions of the endothelium, which worsen as age increases and may be significantly improved by the physical activity, is a common limiting factor for the abilities to withstand both physical stresses and challenges imposed by COVID-19. However, the current anti-epidemic measures promote sedentary indoor lifestyles, at odds with the most efficient behavioral interventions known to decrease the vulnerability to both the severe forms of COVID-19 and the prevalent aging-associated diseases. To achieve a proper balance in public health approaches to COVID-19, gerontologists should be involved in crosstalk between virologists, therapists, epidemiologists, and policy makers. The present publication suggests a conceptual background for that.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the influence of age structure on the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was investigated and the impact of stringency policy and development level income and number of hospital beds on the number of deaths due to the epidemic.
Abstract: This article aims at answering the following questions: (1) What is the influence of age structure on the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)? (2) What can be the impact of stringency policy (policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic) on the spread of COVID-19? (3) What might be the quantitative effect of development levelincome and number of hospital beds on the number of deaths due to the COVID-19 epidemic? By employing the methodologies of generalized linear model, generalized moments method, and quantile regression models, this article reveals that the shares of median age, age 65, and age 70 and older population have significant positive impacts on the spread of COVID-19 and that the share of age 70 and older people in the population has a relatively greater influence on the spread of the pandemic. The second output of this research is the significant impact of stringency policy on diminishing COVID-19 total cases. The third finding of this paper reveals that the number of hospital beds appears to be vital in reducing the total number of COVID-19 deaths, while GDP per capita does not affect much the level of deaths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, this article suggests some governmental health policies to control and decrease the spread of COVID-19.
19 citations
TL;DR: An overview of the current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines with their mechanisms of action, current technologies utilized in manufacturing of the vaccines, and limitations in this new field with emerging data is provided in this article.
Abstract: It has been over a year since SARS-CoV-2 was first reported in December of 2019 in Wuhan, China. To curb the spread of the virus, many therapies and cures have been tested and developed, most notably mRNA and DNA vaccines. Federal health agencies (CDC, FDA) have approved emergency usage of these S gene-based vaccines with the intention of minimizing any further loss of lives and infections. It is crucial to assess which vaccines are the most efficacious by examining their effects on the immune system, and by providing considerations for new technological vaccine strategies in the future. This paper provides an overview of the current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines with their mechanisms of action, current technologies utilized in manufacturing of the vaccines, and limitations in this new field with emerging data. Although the most popular COVID-19 vaccines have been proven effective, time will be the main factor in dictating which vaccine will be able to best address mutations and future infection.
11 citations
29 Sep 2013
TL;DR: Kalpana Pandit weighs up the pros and cons of two styles of classroom teaching: the ‘open classroom’ and ‘individual group’.
Abstract: Kalpana Pandit weighs up the pros and cons of two styles of classroom teaching: the ‘open classroom’ and ‘individual group’.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it is suggested that aging is the product of chemical interactions between the rapidly turningover free metabolites and the slowly turning-over metabolites incorporated in macromolecules involved in metabolic control.
Abstract: In the current literature, the definitions of aging range from relying on certain sets of distinctive features at the molecular, organismal, populational and/or even evolutional levels/scales to declaring it a treatable disease and, moreover, to treating aging as a mental construct rather than a natural phenomenon. One reason of such a mess may be that it is common in the natural sciences to disregard philosophy of science where several categories of definitions are recognized, among which the nominal are less, and the so-called real ones are more appropriate in scientific contexts. E.g., water is, by its nominal definition, a liquid having certain observable features and, by its real definition, a specific combination (or a product of interaction) of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Noteworthy, the real definition is senseless for people ignorant of atoms. Likewise, the nominal definition of aging as a set of observable features should be supplemented, if not replaced, with its real definition. The latter is suggested here to imply that aging is the product of chemical interactions between the rapidly turning-over free metabolites and the slowly turning-over metabolites incorporated in macromolecules involved in metabolic control. The phenomenon defined in this way emerged concomitantly with metabolic pathways controlled by enzymes coded for by information-storing macromolecules and is inevitable wherever such conditions coincide. Aging research, thus, is concerned with the elucidation of the pathways and mechanisms that link aging defined as above to its hallmarks and manifestations, including those comprised by its nominal definitions. Esoteric as it may seem, defining aging is important for deciding whether aging is what should be declared as the target of interventions aimed at increasing human life and health spans.
3 citations
TL;DR: It is proposed that initial VO2 max has a critical role in COVID sensitivity because of the direct relationship of disease severity with oxygen use, and the parallel decline in aging.
Abstract: The decline in human performance with age at 5000 m, an athletic event requiring high VO2 max, is remarkably precise, and unavoidable, and related to entropy, even at an individual level. Women and men show an identical age-related decline, up to ~100 years old. The precision of the decline shows the limitations for therapy of aging. Mortality incidence for COVID-19 shows a similar relationship. We propose that initial VO2 max has a critical role in COVID sensitivity because of the direct relationship of disease severity with oxygen use, and the parallel decline in aging.
2 citations
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"COVID-19: A Challenge to Physiology..." refers background in this paper
...Notably, the risk of COVID-19 complications and associated deaths is increased upon reduced glucose tolerance even in non-diabetic patients (Drucker, 2020; Huang et al., 2020; Marhl et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020)....
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TL;DR: Clinical evidence correlating improved glycemic control with better outcomes in patients with COVID-19 and pre-existing T2D is provided, associated with markedly lower mortality compared to individuals with poorly controlled BG during hospitalization.
1,177 citations
"COVID-19: A Challenge to Physiology..." refers background in this paper
...Specific regimens of exercises accounting for the peculiarities of the current epidemiological situation are being developed and tested (Dominski and Brandt, 2020; Ravalli and Musumeci, 2020; Zhu, 2020)....
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TL;DR: People of older age, male gender, black race, and preexisting chronic health conditions are particularly prone to develop severe sepsis; hence prevention strategies should be targeted at these vulnerable populations in future studies.
Abstract: Severe sepsis is a leading cause of death in the United States and the most common cause of death among critically ill patients in non-coronary intensive care units (ICU). Respiratory tract infections, particularly pneumonia, are the most common site of infection, and associated with the highest mortality. The type of organism causing severe sepsis is an important determinant of outcome, and gram-positive organisms as a cause of sepsis have increased in frequency over time and are now more common than gram-negative infections. Recent studies suggest that acute infections worsen pre-existing chronic diseases or result in new chronic diseases, leading to poor long-term outcomes in acute illness survivors. People of older age, male gender, black race, and preexisting chronic health conditions are particularly prone to develop severe sepsis; hence prevention strategies should be targeted at these vulnerable populations in future studies.
1,067 citations
"COVID-19: A Challenge to Physiology..." refers background in this paper
...Indeed, the incidences of autoimmune disorders and systemic septic responses, which are associated with intravascular coagulation, increase in the elderly (Vadasz et al., 2013; Mayr et al., 2014; Starr and Saito, 2014)....
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..., 2013) and systemic septic responses (Mayr et al., 2014; Starr and Saito, 2014), sepsis being especially similar to the cytokine storm observed in severe COVID19 cases (Colantuoni et al....
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