A multiple-parameter comparison of immunocompetence and tumor resistance in aged BALB/c mice

Several parameters of cell-mediated and humoral immunity were measured in young-adult and aged BALB/c mice and compared with resistance to the ascites form of intraperitoneal induced P815 mastocytoma. It was found that the age-related decline of in vitro phytohemagglutinin (PHA) responsiveness by spleen cells approximated the marked decrease of old mice to tumor-cell challenge and approached that characteristically seen in humoral immunity. Thus, decreased PHA responsiveness of splenic lymphocytes provided as sensitive an estimate of the age-related decline of immunocompetence in old mice as other classical parameters of cell-mediated immunity (e.g. graft-vs-host reaction or in vivo cellular proliferation of parental spleen cells in lethally-irradiated F1 recipients). Results could be interpreted to represent a decreased ability of noncycling T-cells to be released to a functional cycling state.