The immune system permeates and regulates organs and tissues across the body, and has diverse roles beyond pathogen control, including in development, tissue homeostasis and repair. The reshaping of the immune system that occurs during aging is therefore highly consequential. In this Focus issue, Nature Aging presents a collection of reviews of and opinions on recent advances in research into immune aging.
Franceschi and colleagues survey immune aging clocks through the lens of personalized inflammaging. They highlight that each individual’s unique combination of genetics, lifetime exposures and lifestyle factors results in heterogeneous manifestations of inflammaging, pose that precision measures and interventions should be prioritized, and spotlight a potential role for artificial intelligence in navigating this complexity.
In a modern western environment we face novel (in the grand arc of human existence) “lifetime exposures” including antibiotic use, microplastics, and who knows what else that appear to significantly affect the normal aging and function of the immune system. These (especially in the case of antibiotics) can trigger autoimmune disease or cytokine storms where the immune system attacks the body or otherwise non-threatening things (e.g., pollen).
Can we even assess or identify “normal” aging of the immune system anymore?
Across these articles, the immune system stands out as an early target during aging: the loss of its protective capacities facilitates tissue degeneration and pathology. Weyand and Goronzy, however, highlight the acquisition of autoreactive functions during immune aging, and reflect on recent data that unexpectedly report an increase in autoimmune conditions with age7. They propose that autoimmunity during aging constitutes inappropriate immune youthfulness and suggest that waning immune activity during aging could be beneficial in calibrating autoreactivity.
Interesting.
Live long enough and " …waning immune activity…" might self correct auto immune conditions.
If only.
Meanwhile, auto immune conditions continue to concern and frustrate my and many other’s wellbeing.
I’ve got lots of good stuff going, but I’d certainly welcome a “trade” of some time for healthspan without auto immune reactivity.
I think the immune issues are probably just another part of the general failure of the genome as people age. The immune system is unusual because WBCs are used to transfer mitochondria.
I monitor quite a few different sources and aim to post articles on rapamycin news that seem to perhaps be a little bit novel - whether I agree with them or not.
That’s fascinating! I had read that mitochondria were shared via the blood, and made up some fraction there of. I never had an idea how that sharing occurred.