Reviewing the Components of Age-Related Immune System Dysfunction

The short open access review paper noted here sketches a high-level picture of the known components of immune system aging, without going into great detail. The progressive failure of the immune system is a significant component of the frailty that accompanies old age; not only are the elderly vulnerable to pathogens that are easily resisted in youth, but the immune system fails to destroy senescent and potentially cancerous cells, increasing their contribution to aging and mortality risk. Some of this decline is the result of molecular damage after the SENS vision for the treatment of aging, but some is a matter of misconfiguration and limits. The immune system retains a memory of the pathogens it encounters; that memory can become corrupted in a number of ways, and in the end it simply takes up too much of the limited capacity of the immune system. Capacity is limited in part because the thymus atrophies with age, reducing the supply of new immune cells to a low level in comparison to childhood. In old age, there are too many memory cells, most uselessly specialized to persistent but otherwise minor threats such as cytomegalovirus, and too few cells capable of tackling new pathogens. This part of the problem at least might be solved in the near future through selective destruction of misconfigured or damaged immune cells, and their replacement with new cells cultured from a patient blood sample. Human aging is characterized by both physical and physiological...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs