Did COVID Speed Up Aging?

The vast majority of people in the world have had COVID infection one or more times with or without vaccination, and a large percentage of those infected have persistent symptoms we call Post Acute COVID Syndrome or “Long COVID”. As noted in several of my prior posts, the medical community and scientists have described all sorts of immunologic, inflammatory, endocrine, and viral molecular epiphenomena in people with Long COVID, without convincing evidence that any of these measurable chemical changes are etiologic, or useful as a definitive diagnostic test to define the syndrome. We may, however be getting closer to a mechanistic explanation of this condition, with mounting evidence that the virus causes stiffening of the vascular system—the same phenomenon that occurs with “normal”aging, but accelerated by this infection. Increasing rigidity of our blood vessels is associated with, and very likely a major cause of the increased incidence of cardiovascular events (hypertension, MI, TIA, stroke, CHF, and embolic events) which are seen with aging. That loss of elasticity in the muscular wall is accompanied by dysfunction of the endothelial cells lining the vessel, which are in contact with the blood stream, and necessary for the normal functioning of several critical systems, notably the clotting cascade. If the COVID Pandemic has left us with a legacy of millions of people with accelerated aging of the vascular system the implications are potentially dire.

Evidence that COVID infection stiffens the arterial vessels began to appear in reports several years ago, but most of the studies included small numbers of patients, restricted populations, and no control groups or longitudinal follow up. A recent study of a much larger cohort of patients from multiple countries, with a COVID negative control group, equal representation of the two sexes (the number of genders wasn’t specified) and a good racial mix, was published last month in the European Heart Journal. I’m not going into details as to how arterial stiffness is measured or other aspects of the study, you can examine the CARTESIAN report for yourself. (The second reference from the journal Viruses is an example of earlier reports).

CARTESIAN study’, by R.M. Bruno et al., European Heart Journal, Aug 15, 2025 https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf430.

The Effect of COVID-19 on Arterial Stiffness and Inflammation: A Longitudinal Prospective Study

Viruses. 2025 Mar 11;17(3):394. doi:10.3390/v17030394

The CARTESIAN study included 2390 persons from 34 centers and looked at people divided into 4 groups: COVID negative controls, COVID without hospitalization, infection with hospital admission, and ICU admission. Following resolution of acute infection, they found that as a total group the infected patients had significantly increased arterial stiffening compared to the COVID negative controls; surprisingly, and contrary to initial hypothesis, the degree of stiffening was unrelated to the severity of the initial infection—those with mild infection were affected equally as patients with severe illness. Another remarkable finding was that when they stratified the patients by sex, the significant vascular stiffening was found only in the female group. At first glance that would seem to fly in the face of the higher acute COVID mortality rate seen in men. One possible explanation could be that the fraction of men susceptible to this vascular damage have a greater risk of death during the acute phase, and a “survivor effect” then makes it appear convalescent women are more likely to have it. (The study was conducted after resolution of the acute illness with 6 month average follow up). Those women with persistent symptoms (Long COVID) at 6 months had significantly higher arterial stiffness than asymptomatic women, but both groups were higher than the infection negative controls. There was some small improvement in vascular status in the infected patients at 6 months, but arterial stiffness remained significantly elevated. Does this mean that a huge number of people (especially women) have had the aging of their vascular systems accelerated by COVID? If so then we should expect a tsunami of “premature” cardiovascular disease in the coming years, and increases in excess deaths.

The Summer COVID wave has peaked and is now declining as evidenced by the usual CDC graphs of test positivity, emergency room visits and hospitalizations. If you have had documented COVID in this year’s late Summer wave then you were just “vaccinated” via natural immunity, most likely with the XFG or NB.1.8.1 variants which are now accounting for almost all the circulating COVID virus. The new fall boosters target the LP.8 variant, which was prevalent in the spring when the decision was made for the vaccine target, but that variant currently is only 3% of circulating virus. Data shows the new boosters to be effective in creating an antibody response against these newer variants since all are descendants of the Omicron lineage JN.1. COVID has been running out of options for truly unique mutations that give it a highly potent antibody escape potential. The antibody response generated by the current vaccines is highly effective in preventing severe disease, but not very effective in preventing infection and forward transmission. That’s why there is still such high levels of virus circulating, as seen in the following graphs, but so few people are getting seriously ill (compared to a couple years ago). My favorite indicator, the waste water is confirming the beginning of a national decline in COVID virus, which peaked in mid September.

In spite of the revelations of the past 5 years you may still be in the camp that believes government scientists are ALWAYS acting in your best interest, if so then I am here to disabuse you of that notion. I’ll mention first the infamous Tuskegee experiment, where medical researchers intentionally did not treat a group of about 400 Black male patients so that they could study the natural history of syphilis. The experiment, conducted by the Public Health Service of the US government, began in 1932 and lasted until 1972, with the subjects never informed of their diagnosis or treated. The disease pathology was pretty well worked out many decades before, and it was generally understood that very bad things happen to you when this chronic infection invades the brain, spinal cord and other internal organs. Despite highly effective treatment with penicillin being widely available by 1947, and other less effective treatments in use even when the experiment started, these men were never treated, and as a result 128 died directly from syphilis or its related complications, 40 of their wives became infected, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.

Then there was the 1950 SEA SPRAY operation in which US NAVY scientists decided to spray the population of San Francisco with a combination of Serratia marscens and Bacillus globigii bacteria to determine if the organisms would persist in the environment, particularly the water supply. This was done in furtherance of biologic weapons research, and allegedly the scientists thought Serratia was non-pathogenic. Over a period of days they released into the atmosphere what they believed was sufficient bacteria so that people on average would have inhaled 5000 colony forming units. Within two weeks, ten people were admitted to one city hospital with what was then a very rare bacteria causing urinary tract infections, with one fatality. The government never told the public what was going on until many years later when the information was leaked, and local doctors in 1950 were rightly confused. This strain of Serratia persisted in the water supply, which was one of the main questions the Navy was interested in, and in the 1960’s and 1970’s began to appear as a blood stream and heart valve infection in local IV drug users. Having treated many patients with Serratia marscens infections, I can attest to its extreme pathogenicity, as well as its ability to have picked up multiple antibiotic resistance genes. A persistent severe outbreak of this multiply resistant organism was responsible for a temporary shut down of the New York Hospital Burn Unit during my time there.

These two egregious examples of willful abuse of the the public come from an earlier era, and we can have confidence I think that enough checks and balances have been enacted to prevent these kinds of gross transgressions. Various Federal laws and a slew of regulations followed upon the revelation of Tuskegee in the late 1970’s, including the establishment of the Office of Human Research Protections and the requiring of institutional review boards. But, there are no checks on human nature, and there is zero reason to imagine it has changed one iota from the 1970’s.

Errors in public health policy formation will sometimes occur because of a lack of critical scientific information or faulty information; changes in policy will inevitably occur with the addition of new data—clear upfront discussions of these realities in any particular situation should help create greater public trust. The behaviors that will destroy trust are pretty well delineated at this point: pretending that your best guess or pet theory is a scientifically proven fact; intentionally withholding information in order to insure compliance with your pet theory, attempting to denigrate, malign and silence well informed people who have a different interpretation of the available scientific facts; starting to analyze a problem from a blanket perspective such as “all vaccines of a certain type, or all vaccines in general are bad—equally, “all vaccine recommendations approved by the government must be good”; attaching political significance to a policy decision and consequently being unable to reverse your decision when new data proves that policy to be incorrect. There have been all sorts of postmortems on the COVID Pandemic, but the politics of party infallibility from both sides has not allowed a clear decision as to which policies worked, which did nothing other than annoy people, and which were definitively damaging from a social holistic perspective.

I generally try and stay clear of parroting what dozens of other commentators have to say about hot topics in the news, but the Tylenol controversy definitely needs one more person to comment on it. Some observational studies have shown a link between Autism and Tylenol in pregnancy, and others have not. There are also many studies showing a linkage of certain genetic components, increased parental age, various medical conditions of the mother, birth complications with hypoxia, extreme prematurity, and environmental exposure to pollution and pesticides. Observational studies of association don’t prove causation (we all know that). On the other hand, in the Public Health realm, association studies must by necessity often take the place of controlled experiments, and have led to extremely important discoveries like the role of asbestos in mesothelioma, smoking and lung cancer, seat belts and flying through the windshield. Autism is undoubtedly one word for a collection of disorders with multiple causes. (My opinion only). Tylenol could possibly be a very small contributing factor in some cases, or not. The point is there is no “settled science” here, and to make a huge big deal out of Tylenol as a major cause of Autism is foolish. On the other hand for the New York Times and a gaggle of other “media experts” to scream that, “There is NO scientific evidence what-so-ever to support a link to Tylenol” is equally stupid, especially since such an aggressive posture seems largely motivated by their disliking RFK Jr. and Trump. If these “experts”, would require a randomized controlled trial, or every observational study to concur, they are barking up a non-existent tree. There is a lack of safe alternative drugs for pain and fever relief in pregnancy, and Tylenol has continued to be recommended by the thought leaders in OB/GYN, who are well aware of the conflicting observational study results. Cooler heads should take a middle ground, acknowledge that perhaps we don’t have the final word on Tylenol yet, and stress that pregnant women minimize Tylenol dosing as much as possible during pregnancy, utilizing it only for really significant pain or VERY high fever. Several TikTok videos have already appeared of young women claiming to be pregnant and popping Tylenol for the camera to mock RFK Jr.—good luck finding cooler heads in America today.

The closer today will “fact check”various rumors that are circulating on the internet.

Donald Trump is planning to refuse the Nobel Peace Prize if selected because the medal is, “Too tiny, kind of tacky, not that impressive, and maybe not even real high caret gold stuff.” False: But, he says it would only be worth going to Oslo if they give him two or three with his picture on the front.

Much like MSNBC was forced to change their logo to MSNOW, the DNC will be rebranding as MURDER INC. False: Hakeem Jeffries says this is a malicious lie spread by fascists, Nazi racists and general “threats to Democracy”, who may end our freedom at any time, and need to be stopped by any means necessary. He urged all good Americans not to commit these heinous crimes—especially in states like Texas, Florida, Idaho or Utah where there are unpredictable, unstable judges and the death penalty.

Kamala Harris says in her new book that she didn’t pick Pete Buttigieg as a running mate because he was gay. False: Kamala clarified that she didn’t know the ghost writer was a raging homophobe, and he will not be writing the next book.

The UK, France, Portugal and other European nations just recognized a Palestinian State in the middle east. Partially true: The exact boundaries are still open to discussion, but the leading candidate according to Keir Starmer is Paterson, New Jersey.

Jeffrey Epstein is dead. False: He lives on in the minds and dark fantasies of hundreds of Washington’s finest.

The antidote to Tylenol poisoning is NAC (N-acetylcysteine) and RFK Jr. is recommending it as a treatment for Autism. False: I haven’t told Bobby about this miracle cure yet—stay tuned until after our next lunch meeting.

Have a great weekend everyone. If you find the information useful hit the like button and forward “Clear and Present Thinking” to a friend or your friend’s pet.