Eaton Sheri M, Maue Alexander C, Swain Susan L, Haynes Laura
Trudeau Institute, Saranac Lake, NY 12983, USA.
J Immunol. 2008 Oct 1;181(7):4825-31. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.181.7.4825.
Understanding how aging impacts the function of memory CD4 T cells is critical for designing effective vaccines. Our studies show that immunological memory generated during youth functions well into old age, whereas that generated later in life functions poorly. This is the result of declines in the function of naive CD4 T cells from aged individuals and contributes to reduced efficacy of vaccines in the elderly. To begin to identify the cause of this defect, we examined the function of memory T cells generated from bone marrow precursor cells (BMPC) from young or aged mice in young hosts. In two different models, memory cells derived from young and aged BMPC exhibit good ex vivo and in vivo function. Importantly, memory CD4 T cells generated from aged BMPC exhibit potent cognate helper function for humoral responses, which are critical for effective immunization. These results indicate that there are no apparent age-related intrinsic defects in BMPC with regards to generation of functional memory T cells.
了解衰老如何影响记忆性CD4 T细胞的功能对于设计有效的疫苗至关重要。我们的研究表明，年轻时产生的免疫记忆在老年时仍能良好发挥作用，而晚年产生的免疫记忆则功能不佳。这是老年个体中初始CD4 T细胞功能下降的结果，并且导致老年人疫苗效力降低。为了开始确定这种缺陷的原因，我们检测了在年轻宿主中由年轻或老年小鼠的骨髓前体细胞（BMPC）产生的记忆T细胞的功能。在两种不同的模型中，来自年轻和老年BMPC 的记忆细胞在体外和体内均表现出良好的功能。重要的是，由老年BMPC产生的记忆CD4 T细胞对体液反应表现出强大的同源辅助功能，这对有效的免疫接种至关重要。这些结果表明，就功能性记忆T细胞的产生而言，BMPC中没有明显的与年龄相关的内在缺陷。
