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Age, T Cell Homeostasis, and T Cell Diversity in Humans

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Handbook of Immunosenescence

Abstract

Thymic production is the only source of new naïve T cells; however, very little meaningful thymic output remains after early adulthood. Throughout adult life, peripheral homeostatic mechanisms are critical to maintain sizes of T cell subpopulation and diversity of the T cell receptor repertoire. Failure in T cell homeostasis may result in repertoire contraction and increased clonality within the naïve and memory T cell compartments that could negatively impact immune health in elderly population. This chapter details how to get and how to maintain a diverse repertoire and how uneven homeostatic proliferation can lead to a less diverse and unbalanced repertoire. In the healthy elderly, studies using next-generation sequencing suggest that the repertoire contracts population two to fivefold in the absence of thymic output but remains sufficiently diverse to maintain immunocompetence; however, additional studies across the spectrum of aged individuals are needed to assess the population heterogeneity in maintaining a functional repertoire.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Immunology and Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Claire E. Gustafson & Jörg J. Goronzy

  2. Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    David L. Lamar

  3. Immunology and Rheumatology Clinic, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Cornelia M. Weyand

Authors
  1. Claire E. Gustafson
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  2. David L. Lamar
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  3. Cornelia M. Weyand
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  4. Jörg J. Goronzy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claire E. Gustafson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Geriatrics Research Center on Aging, University of Sherbrooke Department of Medicine, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

    Tamas Fulop

  2. Department of Experimental Pathology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Claudio Franceschi

  3. Institute for Health and Life Sciences, Tokyo, Japan

    Katsuiku Hirokawa

  4. Center for Medical Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Graham Pawelec

Section Editor information

  1. Research Center on Aging, Department of Medicine, Immunology Graduate Programme, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

    Tamas Fulop

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Gustafson, C.E., Lamar, D.L., Weyand, C.M., Goronzy, J.J. (2019). Age, T Cell Homeostasis, and T Cell Diversity in Humans. In: Fulop, T., Franceschi, C., Hirokawa, K., Pawelec, G. (eds) Handbook of Immunosenescence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99375-1_9

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