Lower proportion of naive peripheral CD8+ T cells and an unopposed pro-inflammatory response to human Cytomegalovirus proteins in vitro are associated with longer survival in very elderly people.

ABSTRACT: The low percentages of naïve T cells commonly observed in elderly people are thought to be causally associated with mortality, primarily from infectious disease, and are taken as a hallmark of "immunosenescence". Whether low levels of naive cells actually do associate with mortality has, however, not been tested in longitudinal studies. Here, we present correlations between peripheral T-cell phenotypes and 8-year survival in individuals from the population-based prospective Leiden 85-plus Study. Counter-intuitively, we found that a lower frequency of naïve CD8+ T cells (characterized as CD45RA+CCR7+CD27+CD28+) at baseline (>88 years) correlated with significantly better survival, while there was a tendency for the reciprocal accumulation of late-differentiated effector memory cells (CD45RA

SUBMITTER: Derhovanessian E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3705124 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature