ReviewGeroScience2021
A geroscience perspective on immune resilience and infectious diseases: a potential case for metformin.
Review in GeroScience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Metformin for Treatment of Acute COVID-19: Systematic Review of Clinical Trial Data Against SARS-CoV-2.Diabetes care · 2023Pooled it
- Lymphocyte and dendritic cell response to a period of intensified training in young healthy humans and rodents: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Pooled it
- Trial
- Trial
- The effect of metformin treatment during primary influenza infection on heterologous challenge in young and aged mice.Frontiers in aging · 2026Article
- Emerging uncertainty on the anti-aging potential of metformin.Ageing research reviews · 2025Review
- The COVID-19 legacy: consequences for the human DNA methylome and therapeutic perspectives.GeroScience · 2025Review
- Vaccinations in older adults: Optimization, strategies, and latest guidelines.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025Article
- Review
- Metformin: Beyond Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.Cureus · 2024Review
- Geroscience and pathology: a new frontier in understanding age-related diseases.Pathology oncology research : POR · 2024Review
- Clinically Evaluated COVID-19 Drugs with Therapeutic Potential for Biological Warfare Agents.Microorganisms · 2023Review
- A pilot metabolomic study of drug interaction with the immune response to seasonal influenza vaccination.NPJ vaccines · 2023Article
- Aging and chronic inflammation: highlights from a multidisciplinary workshop.Immunity & ageing : I & A · 2023Review
- The effect of metformin on influenza vaccine responses in nondiabetic older adults: a pilot trial.Immunity & ageing : I & A · 2023Article
- Unveiling the potential pleiotropic effects of metformin in treating COVID-19: a comprehensive review.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2023Review
- Current Challenges and Solutions for Clinical Management and Care of People with HIV: Findings from the 12th Annual International HIV and Aging Workshop.AIDS research and human retroviruses · 2023Article
- Old drug, new tricks: the utility of metformin in infection and vaccination responses to influenza and SARS-CoV-2 in older adults.Frontiers in aging · 2023Review
- The central role of DNA damage in immunosenescence.Frontiers in aging · 2023Review
- Metformin Use before Influenza Vaccination May Lower the Risks of Influenza and Related Complications.Vaccines · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
We are in the midst of the global pandemic. Though acute respiratory coronavirus (SARS-COV2) that leads to COVID-19 infects people of all ages, severe symptoms and mortality occur disproportionately in older adults. Geroscience interventions that target biological aging could decrease risk across multiple age-related diseases and improve outcomes in response to infectious disease. This offers hope for a new host-directed therapeutic approach that could (i) improve outcomes following exposure or shorten treatment regimens; (ii) reduce the chronic pathology associated with the infectious disease and subsequent comorbidity, frailty, and disability; and (iii) promote development of immunological memory that protects against relapse or improves response to vaccination. We review the possibility of this approach by examining available evidence in metformin: a generic drug with a proven safety record that will be used in a large-scale multicenter clinical trial. Though rigorous translational research and clinical trials are needed to test this empirically, metformin may improve host immune defenses and confer protection against long-term health consequences of infectious disease, age-related chronic diseases, and geriatric syndromes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.