The Concept of Immune Resilience and Its Relevance to Degenerative Aging

The aging of the immune system is widely considered a progressive loss of functional capacity, such as the ability to effectively destroy pathogens and errant cells (known as immunosenescence), coupled to rising levels of unresolved, chronic inflammation (known as inflammaging). In today's open access paper, the authors are more interested in how well the immune system brings itself back to an equilibrium state following the disruptions of an inflammatory response. They call this capacity for restoration "immune resilience". In this framework, aging brings a loss of the ability to restore normality to the immune system following a period of stress, such as that resulting from infection, and it is this loss of resilience to stress that leads to morbidity and mortality. Is this a useful way to look at immune aging? It is similar to the view of aging as a whole, a loss of the ability to restore homeostasis in the face of disruptive perturbation, that has been presented by Gero in recent years. At some point, the disruption pushes the body beyond its capacity for restoration, and into terminal decline. Does this building of frameworks lead to any usefully different approach to therapy than the present concept of progressively greater immunosenescence and inflammaging, however? At some point one has to match frameworks to the underlying biology, the mechanisms, the targets for therapy. Immune resilience despite inflammatory stress promotes longevity and favorable hea...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs