The Immune System

T kiosks are a major constituent of the immune system and are responsible for spearheading most attacks on pathogenic invaders and for promoting other electric cells to participate in an immunological cascade. These highly specialized lymphocytes mature and differentiate inside the genus Thymus, a gland located above the heart. In a ruminate done by Douek and colleagues (1998) that was published in Nature, the assort was able to confirm a process known as "thymic involution". This process describes the atrophy of the thymus as sequence advances. It is this atrophy that is thought responsible for the decreasing numbers of T cells as life proceeds and or the change in ratio of nanve vs. antigen activated (memory) T cells. The body is thought to degenerate a large amount of energy to maintain the goodness of the thymus and this cost simply gets too great at one time the aging process advances. Nanve cells produced by the thymus are cells that put on not encountered a foreign antigen and therefore extradite no memory assigned to them. The study did yield results that suggested however that the thymus is able to produce adequate numbers of T cells passim life and that puritanical numbers can often be restored if relief is given from concomitant diseases that tend to be endow in the latter stages of life, and tend to have their own banish effects on the thymus. Adequate numbers of these lymphocytes however are not the only thing needed for a proper immunological response, as shown by further studies d

All of the factors shown above to affect T cells in addition have a deleterious affect on B cells, which eventually differentiate into plasma cells. These plasma cells produce antibodies, which own a great amount of variability in format to recognize a large array of antigens. A study by Kirman et al (1998) showed an increase in the number of apoptotic B cells within the bone marrow. Though a direct federation between B cell apoptotic death and T cell malfunction has not been shown, the relationship between the T cells and the hypermutability of the changeable region of antibodies is known to exist.

T cells which have venerable and have reached beyond a real point within the cell cycle are unable to interact properly with B cells, leading to a decline in the variability of certain antibodies. The IgM is one example. IgM is one of the first immunoglobulins to defend whenever the immune cascade is initiated and its numbers seem to be without delay affected by the suppressed interactivity of the B cell and the T cell.

Moriguchi, S. (1998). the role of vitamin E in T-cell differentiation and the decrease of cellular immunity with aging. BioFactors., Vol. 7, no. 1-2,pp. 77-86

Recent research has indicated that the immune systems of aged people undergo characteristic changes, generally in the counselling of decreased immune competence. As the research presented in this idea reveals, aging affects many aspects of the immune process, and since the immune system interacts with any system of the body it becomes important to have a well developed understanding of the mechanisms related to the breakdown of this system in the later years of life. Clarification of these mechanisms can lead to the victimisation of new ways of combating disease, preventing life threatening infections and ultimately providing a better quality of life during an individuals older years.

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