Laboratory of Immunopathology and Immunosenescence, Department of Biomedicine, Neuroscience and Advanced Diagnostics, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy.
School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences, King's College London, The Rayne Institute, London, UK.
Clin Exp Immunol. 2021 Aug;205(2):198-212. doi: 10.1111/cei.13606. Epub 2021 Jun 17.
Ageing dramatically affects number and function of both innate and adaptive arms of immune system, particularly T cell subsets, contributing to reduced vaccination efficacy, decreased resistance to infections and increased prevalence of cancer in older people. In the present paper, we analysed the age-related changes in the absolute number of lymphocytes in 214 Sicilian subjects, and in the percentages of T and natural killer (NK) cells in a subcohort of donors. We compared these results with the immunophenotype of the oldest living Italian supercentenarian (aged 111 years). The results were also sorted by gender. The correlation between number/percentage of cells and age in all individuals. and separately in males and females, was examined using a simple linear regression analysis. We did not record the increase in the rate of inversion of the CD4/CD8 ratio, frequently reported as being associated with ageing in literature. Our observation was the direct consequence of a flat average trend of CD4 and CD8 T cell percentages in ageing donors, even when gender differences were included. Our results also suggest that CD4 and CD8 subsets are not affected equally by age comparing females with males, and we speculated that gender may affect the response to cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection. The supercentenarian showed a unique immunophenotypic signature regarding the relative percentages of her T cell subsets, with CD4 and CD8 T cell percentages and CD4 naive T cell values in line with those recorded for the octogenarian subjects. This suggests that the supercentenarian has a naive 'younger' T cell profile comparable to that of a >80-year-old female.
衰老大幅影响先天和适应性免疫系统的数量和功能，特别是 T 细胞亚群，导致疫苗效力降低、感染抵抗力下降以及老年人癌症患病率增加。在本文中，我们分析了 214 名西西里受试者的淋巴细胞绝对数量以及供体亚组的 T 细胞和自然杀伤 (NK) 细胞百分比随年龄的变化。我们将这些结果与意大利最年长的超级百岁老人（111 岁）的免疫表型进行了比较。结果还按性别进行了分类。使用简单线性回归分析检查了所有个体以及男性和女性中细胞数量/百分比与年龄之间的相关性。我们没有记录 CD4/CD8 比值倒置率的增加，该比值在文献中常被报道与衰老有关。我们的观察结果是 CD4 和 CD8 T 细胞百分比在衰老供体中呈平均趋势的直接结果，即使包括了性别差异。我们的结果还表明，CD4 和 CD8 亚群在女性和男性之间受年龄的影响程度不同，我们推测性别可能会影响巨细胞病毒 (CMV) 感染的反应。这位超级百岁老人在其 T 细胞亚群的相对百分比方面表现出独特的免疫表型特征，CD4 和 CD8 T 细胞百分比以及 CD4 幼稚 T 细胞值与 80 岁以上受试者记录的值一致。这表明超级百岁老人具有与 >80 岁女性相当的幼稚“年轻”T 细胞特征。
