The risk of serious complications and the fatality rate due to COVID-19 pandemic have proven particularly higher in older persons, putting a further strain in healthcare system as we dramatically observed. COVID-19 is not exclusively gerophile (géro “old” and philia “love”) as young people can be infected, even if older people experience more severe symptoms and mortality due to their greater frailty. Indeed, frailty could complicate the course of COVID-19, much more than the number of years lived. As demonstration, there are centenarians showing remarkable capacity to recover after coronavirus infection. We hypothesize that centenarian’s portfolio could help in identifying protective biological mechanisms underlying the coronavirus infection. The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) is one of the major genetic regions associated with human longevity, due to its central role in the development of adaptive immune response and modulation of the individual’s response to life threatening diseases. The HLA locus seems to be crucial in influencing susceptibility and severity of COVID-19. In this hypothesis, we assume that the biological process in which HLA are involved may explain some aspects of coronavirus infection in centenarians, although we cannot rule out other biological mechanisms that these extraordinary persons are able to adopt to cope with the infection.

中文翻译：

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虚拟的COVID-19保护机制：百岁老人的暗示

事实证明，COVID-19大流行导致严重并发症的风险和致死率在老年人中尤其高，正如我们所观察到的，这对医疗保健系统造成了进一步的压力。COVID-19并非仅是嗜热菌（如“老年”和“爱”），因为年轻人可能会被感染，即使老年人由于体弱多病而遭受更严重的症状和死亡。确实，虚弱会使COVID-19的过程复杂化，远远超过生存年限。作为证明，有些百岁老人显示出在冠状病毒感染后恢复的显着能力。我们假设百岁老人的投资组合可以帮助确定冠状病毒感染背后的保护性生物学机制。人类白细胞抗原（HLA）是与人类寿命相关的主要遗传区域之一，由于其在适应性免疫反应的发展和调节个人对威胁生命的疾病的反应中的重要作用。HLA基因座似乎对影响COVID-19的敏感性和严重性至关重要。在此假设中，我们假设涉及HLA的生物学过程可以解释百岁老人中冠状病毒感染的某些方面，尽管我们不能排除这些非凡的人能够用来应对感染的其他生物学机制。