Journal
FRONTIERS IN IMMUNOLOGY
Volume 4, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2013.00107
Keywords
immunosenescence; T-cells; IL-15; inflammation; CMV; NKRs
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Funding
- Spanish Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias-Fondos FEDER European Union [FIS PI12/02587]
- Red de Investigacion Renal (REDinREN)
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Beyond midlife, the immune system shows aging features and its defensive capability becomes impaired, by a process known as immunosenescence that involves many changes in the innate and adaptive responses. Innate immunity seems to be better preserved globally, while the adaptive immune response exhibits profound age-dependent modifications. Elderly people display a decline in numbers of naive T-cells in peripheral blood and lymphoid tissues, while, in contrast, their proportion of highly differentiated effector and memory T-cells, such as the CD28(null) T-cells, increases markedly. Naive and memory CD4+ T-cells constitute a highly dynamic system with constant homeostatic and antigen-driven proliferation, influx, and loss of T-cells. Thymic activity dwindles with age and essentially ceases in the later decades of life, severely constraining the generation of new T-cells. Homeostatic control mechanisms are very effective at maintaining a large and diverse subset of naive CD4+T-cells throughout life, but although later than in CD8+T-cell compartment, these mechanisms ultimately fail with age.
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