Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 11 pp 3864—3875
Immune senescence and immune activation in elderly colorectal cancer patients
- 1 Section of Oncology and Immunology, Department of Surgery, Oncology and Gastroenterology - DiSCOG, University of Padova, Padova 35128, Italy
- 2 Medical Oncology Unit 1, Veneto Institute of Oncology IOV – IRCCS, Padova 35128, Italy
- 3 Clinical trials and Biostatistic Unit, Veneto Institute of Oncology IOV – IRCCS, Padova 35128, Italy
- 4 Immunology and Molecular Oncology Unit, Veneto Institute of Oncology IOV – IRCCS, Padova 35128, Italy
Received: April 2, 2019 Accepted: June 6, 2019 Published: June 13, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102022How to Cite
Copyright: Giunco et al. This is an open‐access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In our previous study, we found that low thymic output and short telomere length were associated with a higher risk of tumor in elderly cancer patients. Here, we aimed to examine in depth the impact of immunological and biological senescence and immune activation on disease outcome in elderly patients with colorectal cancer (CRC).Peripheral blood samples from 81 CRC patients were studied for immune activation, immune senescence and recent thymic emigrant(RTE) CD4 and CD8 cells by flow cytometry. T-cell receptor rearrangement excision circle (TREC) levels and telomere lengths were measured by real-time PCR. Plasma levels of microbial translocation markers, LPS and sCD14, were quantified by ELISA. While TREC levels and telomere length were not prognostic of disease outcome, high percentages of immune senescent and immune activated CD8 cells were associated with a higher risk of a negative event (relapse, progression, or death) in all studied patients and disease relapse in I-III staged patients. Levels of sCD14 and LPS were higher in patients who will experience a negative event than in patients who will not. In conclusion, in elderly CRC patients higher immunological senescence and immune activation negatively impact the disease outcome; how these characteristics influence the antineoplastic treatments remains to be investigated.