Chronic helminth infection burden differentially affects haematopoietic cell development while ageing selectively impairs adaptive responses to infection.

ABSTRACT: Throughout the lifespan of an individual, the immune system undergoes complex changes while facing novel and chronic infections. Helminths, which infect over one billion people and impose heavy livestock productivity losses, typically cause chronic infections by avoiding and suppressing host immunity. Yet, how age affects immune responses to lifelong parasitic infection is poorly understood. To disentangle the processes involved, we employed supervised statistical learning techniques to identify which factors among haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC), and both innate and adaptive responses regulate parasite burdens and how they are affected by host age. Older mice harboured greater numbers of the parasites' offspring than younger mice. Protective immune responses that did not v

SUBMITTER: Babayan SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5830876 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature