Age-related Dysregulation of Inflammation and Innate Immunity: Lessons Learned from Rodent Models

In the elderly patient population, it has become increasingly evident that immune dysregulation is a contributing factor to age-related pathologies and their associated morbidity and mortality. In particular, elderly subjects are plagued by poor responses to infectious challenge and immunization and are at heightened risk for the development of autoimmune, neuroinflammatory and tumor-associated pathologies. Rodent models of aging and age-related disorders have been utilized to better describe how innate immune cell dysfunction contributes to these clinical scenarios. As the elderly population continues to increase in size, use of these aging rodent models to study immune dysregulation may translate into increased healthy living years for these individuals.