The role of the thymus in immunosenescence: lessons from the study of thymectomized individuals

Victor Appay¹, Delphine Sauce¹, Martina Prelog²

¹Infections and Immunity, INSERM UMR S 945, Avenir Group, Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris6, Paris, France
²Department of Pediatrics, Pediatrics I, Medical University Innsbruck, Austria

Received: February 9, 2010Accepted: February 16, 2010Published: February 17, 2010

Copyright: © 2010 Appay et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The thymus is the major site of T cell production and a key organ of the immune system. Its natural involution during the course of life has cast doubts as to its importance for the integrity of our immunity in adulthood. We provide here an overview of the recent works focusing on the immunological evaluation of subjects thymectomized during early childhood due to cardiac surgery of congenital heart defects. These studies represent new advances in our appreciation of the role of the thymus in humans and more generally in our understanding of the development of immunosenescence.