The ‘Health Collapse Spiral’: A 35-Month Longitudinal Case Study of Physiological Reserve Depletion in a 105-Year-Old Man Following COVID-19

1 INTRODUCTIONThe global demographic shift toward aging has elevated physiological reserve depletion and multisystem vulnerability to core challenges in modern medicine [1], epitomized by frailty and multimorbidity—conditions that drastically amplify susceptibility to physiological stressors. This vulnerability was starkly underscored by COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on older adults [2, 7]. While short-term outcomes in this population are well-documented, granular longitudinal data tracing the clinical trajectory from acute infection to death among the oldest old, particularly centenarians, remain critically scarce.This report addresses this gap by presenting a 35-month progression of a 105-year-old man from post-COVID-19 survival to multisystem failure. We conceptualize his decline as a “health collapse spiral,” contextualizing it within the established model of stressor-induced decompensation in frailty [5, 8]. This case offers a rare longitudinal visualization of systemic physiological reserve depletion at the extreme limits of human age.