COVID-19 and aging: an overview of COVID-19 effects on different dermatological topics

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, known to affect almost any organ and system in the body, triggering a powerful, but often dysregulated immune response that contributes to the creation (or worsening) of a chronic inflammatory state. Consequently, this impacts many biological processes including aging. Therefore, we performed an overview of the current literature on the consequences and manifestations of COVID-19 on nails, hair, and skin, but also on its sequelae on cognitive functions, on its effects on the diagnosis of skin cancers, and on molecular mechanisms of aging focusing primarily on telomeres length. We concluded that COVID-19 had a detrimental effect on the aging process and that these effects varied among different patient populations. COVID-19 seems to accelerate and exacerbate the occurrence of many dermatological disorders that are typical of the elderly. Moreover, it impacted the cognitive functions of patients and patients that reported cognitive dysfunctions months after the resolution of the infection.

Keywords

• aging
• coronavirus disease 2019
• severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
• skin
• telomere