Disease tolerance and infection pathogenesis age-related tradeoffs in mice

Abstract Disease tolerance is a defence strategy essential for survival of infections, limiting physiological damage without killing the pathogen 1,2 . The disease course and pathology an infection may cause can change over the lifespan of a host due to the structural and functional physiological changes that accumulate with age. Because successful disease tolerance responses require the host to engage mechanisms that are compatible with the disease course and pathology caused by an infection, we predicted that this defence strategy would change with age. Animals infected with a 50% lethal dose (LD 50 ) of a pathogen often show distinct health and sickness trajectories due to differences in disease tolerance…