Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and their colleagues have determined a key factor as to why COVID-19 appears to infect and sicken adults and older people preferentially while seeming to spare younger children. Children have lower levels of an enzyme/co-receptor that SARS-CoV-2, the RNA virus that causes COVID-19, needs to invade airway epithelial cells in the lung.
The findings, published November 12 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, support efforts to block the enzyme to potentially treat or prevent COVID-19 in older people.