The advancement of age is often considered a marker of the identification of various health conditions. An increase in age puts an individual at an increased risk of developing health issues and contracting infections due to weakened immunity. Till now, substantial information regarding the effect of age on immunity degradation was not understood, however, a recent study led by researchers from Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, Yale University and the National Cancer Institute may have found a link between immunity weakening with age advancement and blood cell mutations. 

Cell mutation and immunity weakening

Clinical data from over 800,000 patients were analyzed for the study and was found that individuals without apparent blood cancer but with mosaic chromosomal alterations (mCAs) were at an increased risk of contracting infectious diseases. The study, “Hematopoietic mosaic chromosomal alterations increase the risk for diverse types of infection”, is published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Pradeep Natarajan, co-senior author of the study, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate member of the Medical & Population Genetics Program at the Broad said, “This was an ambitious study, given the number of samples, the number of different cohorts, and the number of different teams necessary to pull together. I think this is emblematic of a lot of such COVID-19 research where everyone is so personally invested in trying to gain new insights into an entirely new disease. This was able to move at a much faster scale than I’ve experienced with other collaborations of this size.”

Commenting on the relevance of the study post-COVID, Natrajan said,  “I think it’s important for us to continue to understand who is at risk for severe infections—and the way that we assess that risk today is largely just by age. This work helps us refine that much more and may help in future public health efforts when thinking about quarantines and distancing and prophylactic medicines; and then, for new pandemics, prioritizing early access to vaccines.”