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Updated: Oct 20, 2025

The Use of Mouse Splenocytes to Assess Pathogen-associated Molecular Pattern Influence on Clock Gene Expression
Published on: July 24, 2018
Epigenetic Clocks Are Not Accelerated in COVID-19 Patients
Julia Franzen1, Selina Nüchtern1, Vithurithra Tharmapalan1
1Helmholtz-Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Stem Cell Biology and Cellular Engineering, Medical Faculty of RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
Abstract:
Age is a major risk factor for severe outcome of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In this study, we followed the hypothesis that particularly patients with accelerated epigenetic age are affected by severe outcomes of COVID-19. We investigated various DNA methylation datasets of blood samples with epigenetic aging signatures and performed targeted bisulfite amplicon sequencing. Overall, epigenetic clocks closely correlated with the chronological age of patients, either with or without acute respiratory distress syndrome. Furthermore, lymphocytes did not reveal significantly accelerated telomere attrition. Thus, these biomarkers cannot reliably predict higher risk for severe COVID-19 infection in elderly patients.
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