Today I’ll point out a couple of papers on the topic of why SARS-CoV-2 is so much more severe in the old. There has been a great deal of discussion about the age-related nature of COVID-19 mortality these past few years, though near entirely within the scientific community. The more severe cases involve runaway inflammation, and old people already suffer a raised level of chronic inflammatory signaling, making them that much more vulnerable to cytokine storm events in which the immune system runs wild to cause severe pathology and death. Sepsis is a similar problem, similarly age-rela…
Aging and the Severity of Inflammatory Infectious Disease Such as SARS-CoV-2
Today I’ll point out a couple of papers on the topic of why SARS-CoV-2 is so much more severe in the old. There has been a great deal of discussion about the age-related nature of COVID-19 mortality these past few years, though near entirely within the scientific community. The more severe cases involve runaway inflammation, and old people already suffer a raised level of chronic inflammatory signaling, making them that much more vulnerable to cytokine storm events in which the immune system runs wild to cause severe pathology and death. Sepsis is a similar problem, similarly age-rela…