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Research Paper|Volume 8, Issue 5|pp 848—859

Aging of immune system: immune signature from peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets in 1068 healthy adults

Ling Qin1, Xie Jing1, Zhifeng Qiu1, Wei Cao1,3,4, Yang Jiao2, Jean-Pierre Routy3,4,5, Taisheng Li1
  • 1Department of Infectious Diseases, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
  • 2Department of Internal Medicine, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
  • 3Chronic Viral Illnesses Service, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  • 4Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  • 5Division of Hematology, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Received: January 15, 2016Accepted: January 25, 2016Published: February 15, 2016
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100894

Copyright: © 2016 Qin 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

Aging is a major risk factor for several conditions including neurodegenerative, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Functional impairments in cellular pathways controlling genomic stability, and immune control have been identified. Biomarker of immune senescence is needed to improve vaccine response and to develop therapy to improve immune control. To identify phenotypic signature of circulating immune cells with aging, we enrolled 1068 Chinese healthy volunteers ranging from 18 to 80 years old. The decreased naïve CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, increased memory CD4+ or CD8+ T cells, loss of CD28 expression on T cells and reverse trend of CD38 and HLA-DR, were significant for aging of immune system. Conversely, the absolute counts and percentage of NK cells and CD19+B cells maintained stable in aging individuals. The Chinese reference ranges of absolute counts and percentage of peripheral lymphocyte in this study might be useful for future clinical evaluation.