A Brief Tour of the Causes of Immunosenescence in the Adaptive Immune System

The open access paper I'll point out today covers some of the aspects of aging in the immune system, with a particular focus on the role of cytomegalovirus infection, and makes for interesting reading. The immune system is vital to health, not just in defending against pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi, but also because its agents work to destroy broken and harmful cells, such as those that have become cancerous, remove metabolic waste compounds where they accumulate outside cells, and help to regulate many necessary processes, from wound healing to the formation and destruction of synaptic structures in the brain. When the immune system declines into failure and dysfunction with advancing age, many other parts of our biology are dragged along with it into the downward spiral that ends in major organ failure and death. Finding ways to even partially reverse the progression of immune aging is obviously of great importance for the near future, a necessary part of the first generation of rejuvenation therapies. Fortunately, there are a few comparatively straightforward approaches that might bear fruit in the years ahead, despite the enormous and still incompletely mapped complexity of immune system biochemistry. The immune system is broadly divided into innate and adaptive components, comprising different types of cell, different behaviors, and different vulnerabilities that lead to accumulated damage and disarray with time. The adaptive immune system is more...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs