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The narrowing of the CD8 T cell repertoire in old age

Marcia A Blackman1, David L Woodland

  • 1Trudeau Institute, 154 Algonquin Ave, Saranac Lake, NY 12983, USA. mblackman@trudeauinstitute.org

Current Opinion in Immunology
|June 10, 2011
PubMed

Immune function declines progressively with age, resulting in increased susceptibility of the elderly to infection and impaired responses to vaccines. A diverse repertoire of T cells is essential for a vigorous immune response, and an important manifestation of immune aging is the progressive loss of repertoire diversity, predominantly among CD8 T cells in both mice and humans. Importantly, perturbations in the peripheral T cell repertoire, including reduction of the CD4:CD8 ratio and cytomegalovirus-driven T cell clonal expansions, make a major contribution to the 'immune risk phenotype' defined for humans, which predicts two-year mortality in very old individuals.

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