Immunosenescence Flashcards
what is the general thought behind the ageing of the immune system?
- with age, the adaptive and the innate immune system become less functional which results in the alreadly being unable to respond to infections or develop immunity following vaccination. This results in higher mortality
what does immunosensece result in?
increased infection, neoplasia and autoimmune disease
what percentage of the population is over 65 in the UK?
18%
how are stem cells thought to affect immune ageing?
the HSC pool is thought to age- because all of the components of the immune system come form the HSCs, it is likely that ageing of this stem cell pool can affect the system
how are HSCs thought to age and as a result of what processes?
- with time they are skewed towards myelin progenitor which differentiate into the innate immune system resulting in less T cells and B cells
- they show a decreased ability to engraft during transplantation (they have a reduced ability to reconstitute and divide)
- older HSCs my not decrease in number but there is increased frequency in the death of their progenitors- suggesting increase DNA damage that triggers the anti tumourr defences on asymmetric division
- they increase in ROS which can cause them to proliferate and not stay quiescent- exhaust the population
- they increase in p16 expression which has been linked to reduced repopulation potential- likely due to sen pathway activation
how has increased inflammation disorders of ageing been attributed to a dysfunctional immune system?
macrophages have been shown to increase in their production in pro-inflammatory cytokines
what sort of diseases does the increase in cytokines from macrophages stimulate?
atherosclerosis, diabetes, osteoporosis
how and why does the function of granulocytes change with age?
- macorphages upregulate pro-inflammatory cytokines
- macorphages and neutrophils decline in their phagocytotic capabilities due to a reduced superoxide anion production
- reduced toll-like receptors on macrophages
what are toll-like receptors?
Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a class of proteins that play a key role in the innate immune system. They are single, membrane-spanning, non-catalytic receptors usually expressed in sentinel cells such as macrophages and dendritic cells, that recognize structurally conserved molecules derived from microbes. Once these microbes have breached physical barriers such as the skin or intestinal tract mucosa, they are recognized by TLRs, which activate immune cell responses. receptors bind to structural shapes or patterns called PAMPs (pathogen-associated molecular patterns) that are present in whole groups of pathogens, but not the host - the ability oformyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP)s to activate neutrophils decreases in old nueotrphils and it thought to occur as a result of a reduction in intracellular Ca2+ mobilisation
what areormyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP)s
they are cytokines which activate macrophages and neurtorphils by interaction with G-protein coupled receptor and activating an inflammatory response at the site of invasion
how are hormones thought to affect the immune system?
- studies suggest that as we age, we gain more circulating cortisol and increase cortisol production. cortisol acts to suppress the immune system but is normally offset by DHEAS. However, the production of DHEAS decreases with age, meaning there is more immunosuppression in the elderly following injury
how does the number and function of NK cells change with age?
increase in number but decrease in function as a result of decrease cytotoxicity
why do NK cells decrease toxicity with time?
they express reduced production of cytokines and cheekiness- this is likely due to the expansion of different NK-cell subsets because there are reports that in the elderly there in an increased proportion of the CD 56- NK cells which exhibit lower cytolytic activity and have a reduced ability to secrete cytokines in comparison to the more abdunant CD56+ NK-cell subset.
what is the decrease in NK cytoxicity attributed to?
the expansion of different NK-cell subsets because there are reports that in the elderly there in an increased proportion of the CD 56- NK cells which exhibit lower cytolytic activity and have a reduced ability to secrete cytokines in comparison to the more abdunant CD56+ NK-cell subset.
what type of NK cell subset increases with age
CD56-
how do B-cell mature in the bone marrow?
- the common lymphocyte precursors become Pro-B cells in the bone marrow by successful immunoglobulin heavy chain gene rearrangements and subsequently differentiated into Pre-B-cells which migrate to the periphery. Transition from the pro to the pre stages dependent the activity of recombination activating gene 1 and 2 (RAG-1/-2)
what are the two main reasons y humour immunity in aged individuals is severely comprimised as a result of?
- decreased production go long-term immunoglobulin producing B-lymphocytes because of intrinsic and micro environmental defects
- the loss of immunoglobulin diversity and affinity as a result of disrupted germinal centre formation
how do the numbers of pre-cells change over time?
they decrease
what was the decline in pre-cells once attributed to and what is it now thought to also occur from?
- was thought to result from from the diminished capacity of pro-b cells to differentiate.
- but, the numbers of proB cells has also been found to decline and in the progenitor pols for the b-cell lineages. studies have found that there is a loss in RAG mRNA in the total bone marrow from old mice and it has been suggested that RAG expression in pro-B cells in controlled by the microenvironment itself rather than being an intrinsic defect of den b-cell progenitors
what is VDJ recombination
the recombination of many teens carried out within the pro B and T cells by the RAG genes which recombine the genes of thegenes of immunoglobulin and T cell receptor molecules to allow millions of different antibodies to be expressed
what gene are involved VDJ recombination?
RAG genes
what are the rag genes involved in?
the maturation of pre T cells and B cells via VDJ recombination
how does B cell migration form the bone marrow change in older mice?
recuced
how does the thymus change over time?
reduces in size
where do T cells mature?
in the thymus
what happens when T cells mature in the thymus?
they undergo negative and positive selection in whichself-tolerant, self major histo- compatibility complex-restricted, immunocompetent T cells are produced
what type of cells int he thymus constitute a large proportion of the stroma involved in the regulation for eh microenvironment of t cell development
Highly keratinized thymic epithelial cells (TEC)
what are CD4 cells?
T helper cells
what are CD8 cells?
t killer cells
what is the general process of T cell maturation?
- rearrangement of T cell receptor genes
what is thymus involution?
decrease on thymic epithelial space and thymic cellularity which is replaced y adipose tissue in humans but in the mouse it just reduces in size
how does threat of T cells from the thymus with age change?
decrease
when is thymus growth thought to peak and decline and what argues against this ?
some claim that it peaks at puberty but others have found that in humans thymus cellularity decreases in 9 months old
what is the evidence that the reduction in thymus output stems from the HSC pool?
- purified HSC from old mice exhibit deceased differentiation potential towards lymphoid lineages in vivo and vitro
- decline in the ability of aged bone marrow to reconstitute T-cells populations in lethality irradiated hosts
- ealry thymic progenitors from older mice were inefficient at seeding metal thymus lobes
what is the evidence for the thymus playing a role in decreased T cel output?
- T cel progenitors form old mice were put in fetal thymus explant and they were able to develop normally
what is a key cytokine produced by the thymic epithelial cells that controls T cell maturation (thymocyte development?
IL-7
describe an experiment that demonstrates that IL-7 in thymus involution
IL-7 anitbody treatment of mice resulted in a similar phenotype to thymus involution
what happens when you inject aged mice with IL- 7?
increase thymus weight and cellularity and increased in CD8+ cells but not an overall increase in thymus output- so can rescue early defect in thymopoiesis of ageing mice but can’t regenerate the thymus
give evidence for GH increases thymopoeisis and evidence against
- the decline in circulating levels of GH coincides with the assume onset of thymus atrophy
- administration of GH can increase thymus size and cellularity but can regenerate completely
- little mice with 90% deficiency in serum GH and IGF-1 do not display any changes in the rate of involution
as well as GH, what other hormones are thought to affect thymic involution and what is the evidence for this?
- sex hormones- castration or ovariectomy causes the regeneration of the thymus
- chimeric mice with androgen receptor-defective stroma but wild-type thymo- cytes did not undergo thymic atrophy, suggesting that the stroma is the target of androgen-induced regression
what is the evidence against sex hormones causing thymic involution?
there is evidence to suggest that testosterone is not the sole contributor to involution, including a recent examination of thymic atrophy in hypogonadal mice with diminished sex steroid produc- tion, which presented no changes in cellularity or cellular distribution compared to wild-type littermates.88 Corres- pondingly, this group showed that the effects of sex hor- mone removal are transient in the wild-type mouse, with positive effects lost after 20 weeks.
how are the TECs implicated n ageing?
- their proliferative abilities have been shown to decrease with age meaning they may decrease in number
- they decrease the expression of FoxNI which is needed for differentiation of the TECs
- they reduce in number and are replaced by adipose tissue
- they reduce their expression of IL-7
- it participates in a negative feedback loop in which it becomes deficient, causes perturbed T-cell development which then leads to further defective TECs because the maintenance of the htymic architecuture is dependent on the presence of functionally maturing thymocytes
who do the peripheral T -cells change?
- decrease reportoire of antigen recognition in older animals- 10^8 in young and 10^6 in older
- massive contrction in CD4 t cell diversity in very only
what is a proposed treatment for immunosensence and what are the problems with it
- bone marrow transplant
- occurrence of fraft vs host disease
how cn hormone treatment improve immune ageing?
- application of IL-7- shown to greatly enhance B-cell lymphopoeisis
- IL-7 treatment in old mice has been shown to regenerate the thymus
- DHEAS treatment