{"doi":"10.1101/2020.04.15.20060095","title":"COVID-19 is an emergent disease of aging","abstract":"Abstract COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that poses one of the greatest challenges to public health in recent years. SARS-CoV-2 is highly contagious and often leads to severe viral pneumonia with respiratory failure and death in the elderly and subjects with pre-existing conditions, but the reason for this age dependence is unclear. Here, we found that the case fatality rate for COVID-19 grows exponentially with age in Italy, Spain, South Korea, and China, with the doubling time approaching that of all-cause human mortality. In addition, men and those with multiple age-related diseases are characterized by increased mortality. Moreover, similar mortality patterns were found for all-cause pneumonia. We further report that the gene expression of ACE2, the SARS-CoV-2 receptor, grows in the lung with age, except for subjects on a ventilator. Together, our findings establish COVID-19 as an emergent disease of aging, and age and age-related diseases as its major risk factors. In turn, this suggests that COVID-19, and deadly respiratory diseases in general, may be targeted, in addition to therapeutic approaches that affect specific pathways, by approaches that target the aging process.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2020,"id":118745,"datarank":2.163219340887424,"base_score":3.8066624897703196,"endowment":3.8066624897703196,"self_citation_contribution":0.5709993734655481,"citation_network_contribution":1.5922199674218758,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5709993734655481,"citer_contribution":1.5922199674218758,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":44,"citer_count":43,"citers_with_citation_signal":35,"citers_with_endowment":35,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9592,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":227941,"name":"José Pedro Castro","orcid":"0000-0002-2627-5331","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":372062,"name":"Aleksandr Zenin","orcid":"0000-0003-1522-0359","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":372061,"name":"Anastasia V. Shindyapina","orcid":"0000-0002-7336-3086","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":286205,"name":"Maxim V. Gerashchenko","orcid":"0000-0001-8396-2202","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":405275,"name":"Bohan Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-8007-0214","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551988,"name":"Csaba Kerepesi","orcid":"0000-0001-9541-246X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":286207,"name":"Sun Hee Yim","orcid":"0000-0002-8050-5775","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":372064,"name":"П. О. Федичев","orcid":"0000-0003-0404-808X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":218504,"name":"Vadim N. Gladyshev","orcid":"0000-0002-0372-7016","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245603,"name":"Didac Santesmasses","orcid":"0000-0003-3398-8943","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":28,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:03.409507Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}