Abstract
A good body of experimental and clinical evidence supports the idea that, with advancing age, the immune system undergoes a progressive deterioration of efficiency and that such a decline largely depends on the involution of the thymus, this phenomenon being considered one of the earliest and irreversible age-related events (Walford, 1969). With advancing age, the thymus shows a progressive decline in function, as demonstrated by the reduced size of the organ, by hystological evidence of hypotrophy of the cortex with frequent corticomedullary inversion (G. Goldstein and Mackay, 1969) and by the reduced plasma level of thymic hormones such as thymosin ∝1 (McClure et al., 1982), thymopoietin (Lewis et al., 1978), and the facteur timique sérique (FTS), more recently called thymulin in its zinc-bound active form (J. F. Bach et al., 1972; Fabris et al., 1984).
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Fabris, N., Mocchegiani, E., Muzzioli, M., Provinciali, M. (1990). Zinc, Immunity, and Aging. In: Goldstein, A.L. (eds) Biomedical Advances in Aging. GWUMC Department of Biochemistry Annual Spring Symposia. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0513-2_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0513-2_24
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