Telomeres and COVID-19

Overview

Journal FASEB J

Specialties Biology
Physiology

Date 2020 May 20

PMID 32427393

Citations 47

Authors

Abraham Aviv

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The medical, public health, and scientific communities are grappling with monumental imperatives to contain COVID-19, develop effective vaccines, identify efficacious treatments for the infection and its complications, and find biomarkers that detect patients at risk of severe disease. The focus of this communication is on a potential biomarker, short telomere length (TL), that might serve to identify patients more likely to die from the SARS-CoV-2 infection, regardless of age. The common thread linking these patients is lymphopenia, which largely reflects a decline in the numbers of CD4/CD8 T cells but not B cells. These findings are consistent with data that lymphocyte TL dynamics impose a limit on T-cell proliferation. They suggest that T-cell lymphopoiesis might stall in individuals with short TL who are infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Citing Articles

Maternal infection of SARS-CoV-2 during the first and second trimesters leads to newborn telomere shortening.

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