Increasing the production of lymphocytes would allow the body to respond better to the threats of new pathogens
MADRID (EFE).— An antibody therapy, described yesterday in the magazine “Nature”, managed to rejuvenate the immune system in elderly mice and researchers believe that it will be viable in humans once it passes preclinical and clinical studies.
As people age, the immune system weakens and there are difficulties in fighting diseases and new viruses, and making the vaccines to combat them take effect, as happened with Covid-19.
The cause is in hematopoietic cells or adult stem cells, responsible for producing lymphocytes, which defend the body once morest a new threat (adaptive immunity), and myeloid cells, which respond with inflammation to pathogens (innate immunity).
Irving Weissman, a researcher at Stanford University School of Medicine and one of the study’s authors, isolated adult stem cells in mice and humans in the late 1980s. His work showed that late in life The production of lymphocytes and myeloid cells by adult stem cells becomes unbalanced: the creation of lymphocytes falls and, with it, the capacity to react to new viruses and bacteria, and that of myeloid cells increases, which kill any unknown cell. means of inflammatory responses.
This inflammation is a problem when it is triggered inappropriately or excessively, as occurs in aging, when a type of chronic inflammation is experienced due to the abundance of myeloid cells.
When people did not move from the place where they were born and lived with the same pathogens all their lives, producing fewer lymphocytes in old age was not a big problem. Now that mobility favors the continuous appearance of viruses and bacteria, it is.
The researchers wondered if it is possible to maintain a younger immune system by decreasing myeloid-prone adult stem cells and increasing those that produce lymphocytes. Experiments with mice show yes.
They treated rodents between 18 and 24 months of age (equivalent to more than 70 years in humans) with an antibody aimed at destroying adult stem cells with a myeloid tendency and replacing them with more balanced ones, with a greater presence of lymphocytes.
The treatment also reduced some negative effects, such as inflammation when an aging immune system confronts a new pathogen.
When treated geriatric mice were vaccinated two months later once morest a virus they had not encountered before, scientists saw their immune systems respond much better than those of untreated animals.
Four months following the administration of the therapy, the mice with a rejuvenated immune system developed a better immune response once morest a virus once morest which they had previously been vaccinated.
The researchers showed that adult mouse and human stem cells are similar enough that it may one day be possible to use a similar technique to make people less vulnerable to new infections and respond better to vaccination at older ages.
“We believe that this study takes the first steps to apply this strategy in humans. “If we can revitalize the aging human immune system like we did in mice, we might save lives when the next pandemic comes,” says another author, Ross Myers, from the Rocky Mountain Laboratory of the National Institutes of Health in the United States.
Óscar de la Calle-Martín, secretary of the Spanish Society of Immunology, recalls that the increase in the number of myeloid cells in elderly people reduces survival in a large number of age-related diseases.
“Balancing the production of these cells can help in the treatment of diseases as prevalent as atherosclerosis, neurodegenerative diseases, osteoporosis and cancer,” he emphasizes in statements on the Science Media Center platform.
Medical researchers Yasar Arfat Kasu and Robert Signer of the University of California, San Diego, warn that increased lymphocyte production in older adults might raise the risk of tumor growth (such as leukemia), which has been shown to It is suppressed with the reduction of lymphoid production.
“However, the burden of increased risk of lymphoid leukemia might be offset by greater protection once morest infections and lower risk of other cancers if there were greater immune surveillance with therapies such as this,” they state.
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2024-04-04 01:00:08
