Your biological age
Some viruses make you age faster. Literally.
Your ID card says how old you are. But your body has its own biological age. And certain viral infections, like COVID-19, HIV, or hepatitis, could speed it up.
How do we know this?
Carla Saleh, a researcher at the Institut Pasteur, and her team studied Drosophila (the fruit fly) and discovered that our genes turn on and off differently over time.
By analyzing these changes, we can calculate the true age of our cells, the one that really matters.
And the result is revealing: infected organisms age biologically faster than healthy ones.
The more aggressive the virus, the more this acceleration intensifies.
And it gets even worse: this effect persists even after the virus is gone.
It affects the intestines, metabolism, the immune system…
But there’s some good news!
Certain bacteria can slow down this accelerated aging.
By understanding aging, we can develop interventions to help you age more healthily.