Medical Research Unit of Zacatecas, Mexican Institute of Social Security, Interior de la alameda # 45 col centro, Zacatecas, Mexico.
Clin Immunol. 2013 Aug;148(2):198-205. doi: 10.1016/j.clim.2013.05.015. Epub 2013 May 31.
There is an increased susceptibility to infections during elderly, mainly because of the decreased efficacy of adaptive immunity to contain microorganisms. Albeit most of the elderly adults develop this deficiency in adaptive immunity only a minor percentage of them developed recurrent infectious diseases, thus innate immunity represents an important barrier to avoid infections in this group of aged people. Since antimicrobial peptides are important molecules of innate immunity in the study we sought to determine whether healthy aging correlates with a proper antimicrobial production. Our results by ELISA and flow cytometry showed that healthy elder individuals produce significant amounts of both cathelicidin and β-defensin-2 (hBD-2) comparable with those found in healthy young individuals. Our results suggest that during healthy aging the maintenance of the antimicrobial peptide innate immune response may be responsible for the protection against infectious diseases.
老年人易发生感染，主要是因为适应性免疫对微生物的控制作用减弱。尽管大多数老年人的适应性免疫都会出现这种缺陷，但只有少数老年人会反复发生传染病，因此固有免疫是老年人避免感染的重要屏障。由于抗菌肽是固有免疫的重要分子，因此我们研究旨在确定健康衰老是否与适当的抗菌肽产生相关。我们的 ELISA 和流式细胞术结果表明，健康的老年个体产生大量的抗菌肽 cathelicidin 和 β-防御素-2 (hBD-2)，与健康的年轻个体相当。我们的结果表明，在健康衰老过程中，抗菌肽固有免疫反应的维持可能是防止感染的原因。
