Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 14|pp 7084—7097

Severe pneumonia induces immunosenescence of T cells in the lung of mice

Qingle Ma¹, Chenhui Weng¹, Chenlu Yao¹, Jialu Xu¹, Bo Tian³, Yi Wu¹, Heng Wang¹, Qianyu Yang¹, Huaxing Dai¹, Yue Zhang¹, Fang Xu¹, Xiaolin Shi², Chao Wang¹

¹Laboratory for Biomaterial and Immunoengineering, Institute of Functional Nano and Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, Jiangsu, China
²Medical College of Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, Jiangsu, China
³Department of Orthopedics, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou 215004, Jiangsu, China

* Equal contribution

Received: March 11, 2023Accepted: June 23, 2023Published: July 24, 2023

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204893

Copyright: © 2023 Ma 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

Severe pneumonia may induce sequelae and accelerated aging process even after the person has recovered. However, the underline mechanism is not very clear. More research is needed to fully understand the long-term effects of severe pneumonia. In this study, we found that mice recovered from severe pneumonia showed lung immunosenescence, which was characterized by a bias naive-memory balance of T lymphocytes in the lung. The reduction of naïve T cells is associated with the diminished immune response to cancer or external new antigens, which is one of the key changes that occurs with age. Our results also indicate the link between severe pneumonia and aging process, which is mediated by the disrupted T cells homeostasis in the lungs after pneumonia.