The common problem among serious Covid patients

People who suffer badly from a Covid-19 infection have one thing in common—and it’s not their age or having underlying health problems.

They all tend to have much shorter telomeres, the caps on the end of DNA strands that have been closely linked to ageing.

Researchers from Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre started to suspect that severe Covid cases had short telomeres after they read that long-lasting damage to the lung and kidneys was a common legacy for the worst affected. The organs were unable to regenerate, which pointed to a telomere problem.

Telomeres protect chromosomes in cells, and each time a cell divides, its telomeres shorten until they can no longer protect the cell’s function. Once the damaged cell stops dividing, new tissue is no longer being generated. The result is bodily ageing and health problems such as pulmonary fibrosis when lung tissue starts to stiffen and harden.

Fibrosis-like problems of the lungs and kidneys are common among serious Covid patients, and the Spanish researchers confirmed their suspicions when they analysed tissue samples from 89 Covid patients who needed hospital care.

The good news is that telomere shortening isn’t an inevitable consequence of ageing. Studies have discovered that dietary changes can reverse the process, including foods such as legumes, nuts, seaweed and fruit, while avoiding red and processed meats. Being overweight, not exercising and chronic stress all speed up telomere shortening.

(Source: Aging, 2021; doi: 10.18632/aging.202463)

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