Can the Immune System Still Be Efficient in the Elderly? An Immunological and Immunoendocrine Therapeutic Perspective

Abstract

The continuous global increase in life expectancy represents a central challenge for our society and impacts public social security systems, families and individuals. One of the most striking changes that occur during normal human aging is immunosenescence, a progressive and overall diminution of immune functions that affect all cells and organs of the innate and adaptive immune system. As a hallmark of human aging, the progressive involution of the thymus leads to a disturbed balance and function of naïve, memory and effector T cells, thus promoting a latent pro-inflammatory status in the elderly. Together with chronic infections such as cytomegalovirus, that accumulate during life, this situation manifests in clinically relevant implications such as poor overall immune responses, decreased ability to control infectious disease and diminished response to vaccinations. Interestingly, this process parallels changes in the hormonal balance of aging subjects. In this review, we summarize recently published intriguing results from a very active and growing field of biomedical research and discuss some clinical consequences as well as possible ways of immune- and/or hormone-based interventions to delay or reverse immunosenescence.

Prevalence and patterns of morbidity among adults in Germany

“…Older persons are likely to suffer from one or more diseases, age-related functional impairments, systemic changes of the immune system, the endocrine system, and the ability to maintain salt and water balance as well as an increase in the use of psychotropic drugs [6,7,8,9,10]. Not surprisingly, an increasing number of coexisting health conditions among older persons is associated with disability, poorer health outcomes and quality of life, and higher health care utilization [2,5,11,12].…”

Gastrointestinal Microbiota and Their Contribution to Healthy Aging

“…Probiotics have been investigated for their ability to modulate the immune system, with the aim to prevent and/or limit the effects of immunosenescence [44,][45]. In nursing-home populations, several Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus probiotic strains have been reported to have positive effects by reducing inflammatory status and duration of winter infections [46,][47].…”

Innate Immune Responses in the Geriatric Population

“…In humans, naïve CD8 T cells seem to be more susceptible to death receptor-mediated apoptosis and are more affected by age-related changes than the CD4+ T cell pool (Gupta & Gollapudi, 2006;Gupta & Gollapudi, 2008). CD45RA+CD28+CD8+ T cells from older people produce larger amounts of interferon (IFN) upon polyclonal stimulation than those from young persons (Pfister & Savino, 2008).…”