Several leading figures in the field of Geroscience have authored a position paper arguing for a geroscience approach to COVID-19 and other infectious diseases which preferentially afflict older people. HALO Director Matt Kaeberlein co-authored this piece along with Nir Barzilai (Director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University), James Appleby (CEO of the Gerontological Society of America), Steve Austad (Chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham), Ana Maria Cuervo (co-Director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University), Christian González-Billault (Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Chile), Stephanie Lederman (Executive Director of the American Federation for Aging Research), Ilia Stambler (Chief Science Officer at Vetek – the Movement for Longevity and Quality of Life), and Felipe Sierra (former Director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging).
The position paper advocates for using a geroscience approach of targeting the biological mechanisms of aging to enhance immune function and resilience in older adult. Specific recommendations include large-scale clinical trials to assess whether geroscience interventions including metformin, mTOR inhibitors, and senolytics can dramatically reduce severe outcomes and death from COVID-19, influenza, and other infectious diseases.
This position paper builds upon an op-ed authored by Dr. Kaeberlein on this topic which was published in The Hill entitled “COVID-19: Why it kills the elderly and what we should do about it“.
A full-text version of the position paper can be downloaded here: http://www.aginganddisease.org/CN/article/downloadArticleFile.do?attachType=PDF&id=147986
