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Sicilian centenarian offspring are more resistant to immune ageing

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Abstract

Background

Immunosenescence constitutes a major indirect cause of morbidity and mortality in the elderly. Previous analysis of immune signatures in a cohort of centenarian offspring showed an intermediate immunophenotype between age-matched and younger controls.

Aims

To confirm and extend the previous studies performing further phenotypical analysis in centenarian offspring and controls.

Methods

Analysis of Treg cells, γδ T cells, mucosal-associated invariant T cells, and senescent immune T cells was performed in centenarian offspring and controls.

Results

We report significant differences between elderly and centenarian offspring in most of the studied subsets, showing that centenarian offspring subsets present an intermediate phenotyping between elderly and younger people.

Conclusion

The whole present data confirm and extend the previous results showing that centenarian offspring retain more youthful immunological parameters and that the exhaustion of the immune system is less evident than in elderly without centenarian parents, though further investigations are warranted.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all participants (as well as their legal proxies) for their great contributions.

Funding

This work was supported by Grant of Ministry of University (PRIN: progetti di ricerca di rilevante interesse nazionale—Bando 2015 Prot 20157ATSLF) “Discovery of molecular and genetic/epigenetic signatures underlying resistance to age-related diseases and comorbidities” to CC and GC. MB, AA, and GA are fellows of this project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Graziella Rubino

  2. Department of Pathobiology and Medical Biotechnologies, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Graziella Rubino, Matteo Bulati, Anna Aiello, Stefano Aprile, Caterina Maria Gambino, Calogero Caruso & Giulia Accardi

  3. Specialistic Oncology Laboratory Unit, ARNAS Hospitals Civico, Di Cristina e Benfratelli, Palermo, Italy

    Francesco Gervasi

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  1. Graziella Rubino
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  2. Matteo Bulati
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  3. Anna Aiello
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  4. Stefano Aprile
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  5. Caterina Maria Gambino
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  6. Francesco Gervasi
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  7. Calogero Caruso
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  8. Giulia Accardi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Calogero Caruso.

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Conflict of interest

None of the authors has any conflict of interest related.

Human and animal rights

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any study with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all the participants in this study or their legal proxies.

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Rubino, G., Bulati, M., Aiello, A. et al. Sicilian centenarian offspring are more resistant to immune ageing. Aging Clin Exp Res 31, 125–133 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-018-0936-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-018-0936-7

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