‘Unlike fine wine, the human body does not improve with age. Hearing fades, skin sags, joints give out. Even the body’s immune system loses some of its vigour. This phenomenon, known as immunosenescence, might explain why older age groups are so hard-hit by COVID-19. And there is another troubling implication: vaccines, which incite the immune system to fight off invaders, often perform poorly in older people. The best strategy for quelling the pandemic might fail in exactly the group that needs it most...
‘[Eric] Verdin [president and chief executive of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California] agrees that supporting the older immune system should be a priority. “I think the net result of all this will be renewed interest in understanding the defect in the immune response in the elderly.” That has implications not only for the coronavirus, but also for a host of other diseases, including other viral infections and even cancer. “COVID-19 has brought to the front something that a lot of people have ignored.”
Read here (Nature, Oct 14, 2020)
