Department of Clinical Laboratory, Institute of Translational Medicine, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
State Key Laboratory of Virology, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2023 Mar 29;13:1098712. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2023.1098712. eCollection 2023.
In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the phenomenon that the elderly have higher morbidity and mortality is of great concern. Existing evidence suggests that senescence and viral infection interact with each other. Viral infection can lead to the aggravation of senescence through multiple pathways, while virus-induced senescence combined with existing senescence in the elderly aggravates the severity of viral infections and promotes excessive age-related inflammation and multiple organ damage or dysfunction, ultimately resulting in higher mortality. The underlying mechanisms may involve mitochondrial dysfunction, abnormal activation of the cGAS-STING pathway and NLRP3 inflammasome, the role of pre-activated macrophages and over-recruited immune cells, and accumulation of immune cells with trained immunity. Thus, senescence-targeted drugs were shown to have positive effects on the treatment of viral infectious diseases in the elderly, which has received great attention and extensive research. Therefore, this review focused on the relationship between senescence and viral infection, as well as the significance of senotherapeutics for the treatment of viral infectious diseases.
在全球 COVID-19 大流行的背景下，老年人发病率和死亡率较高的现象令人关注。现有证据表明，衰老和病毒感染相互作用。病毒感染可通过多种途径导致衰老加重，而病毒诱导的衰老与老年人已有的衰老相结合，加重了病毒感染的严重程度，促进了过度的与年龄相关的炎症和多个器官损伤或功能障碍，最终导致死亡率升高。其潜在机制可能涉及线粒体功能障碍、cGAS-STING 通路和 NLRP3 炎性小体的异常激活、预激活的巨噬细胞和过度募集的免疫细胞的作用，以及具有训练免疫的免疫细胞的积累。因此，针对衰老的药物在治疗老年人的病毒感染性疾病方面显示出积极的效果，这引起了极大的关注和广泛的研究。因此，本综述重点关注衰老与病毒感染之间的关系，以及衰老治疗在治疗病毒感染性疾病方面的意义。
