Abstract
PURPOSE: The aim of the paper is to establish and quantify the relation between healthy ageing and the innate and adaptive immune parameters as indicators of age-related diseases. PATIENTS: In order to observe the immunological changes that occur according to age, several humoral and cellular immune parameters were investigated for 288 healthy donors (30-80 years). Subjects' selection was done using clinical, biochemical and immunological parameters of inclusion/exclusion criteria from SENIEUR protocol. RESULTS: Age-related changes were observed for both humoral and cellular immune parameters. Lymphocyte immunophenotyping revealed several significant differences in the distribution of cells, both intra- and inter-age groups, namely decreased values of T-CD3(+), T-CD8(+) and NK cells, and elevated values for T-CD4(+), T-CD4(+)/T-CD8(+) ratio and B cells. The percentages of unstimulated neutrophils that show basal oxidative activity and the intensity of this activity had an increasing tendency age-related. The percentage of N-Formyl-Methionyl-Leucyl-Phenylalanine stimulated neutrophils clearly decreases with age, and is associated with an increasing intensity of oxidative activity. Our data also have shown an increased percentage of oxidative neutrophils after phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate stimulation and an elevated oxidative activity with age. CONCLUSION: Overall healthy ageing is governed by some immune-related deregulations that account for immune exhaustion due to numerous developed immune processes during a life-time and the age-related diseases.