Butenko H M, Pishel' I M, Kharazi A I
Institute of Gerontology, Academy of Medical Science of the Ukraine, Kiev.
Fiziol Zh (1994). 1998;44(1-2):3-10.
The effect of the neonatal thymus grafting or "Thymostimulin" administration on the cellularity, cell composition, immune, response to SRBC and proliferative activity of T- and B-cells in vitro were determined in neonatal spleen grafted CBA/Ca female mice of different ages. Analysis of the thymus graft effect on the T- and B-cells content in the spleen transplant from the adult and old recipients demonstrated no differences. The neonatal thymus grafting led to the essential increase of the immune response, spleen cellularity and to the diametrically opposed changing from negative to positive of the sign of the correlation coefficient between the T-cells content and the cellularity of the neonatal spleen in the old recipients. The similar effect of the neonatal thymus grafting was revealed in respect of correlative connection between content of the T-cells and PFCs in spleen grafted to the old recipients too. The "Thymostimulin" injection led only to the increase of the spleen transplant cellularity. These results suggests that the young thymic microenvironment is essential for the normal T-cells differentiation and for its normal function in the neonatal spleen transplant.