Science reveals new mechanisms for aging! Immune cell defects cause us to age!

May 27, 2020 /
Bio-
BIOON/T-cells should protect us from pathogens, but a new mouse study suggests they may also accelerate agingBlocking cell-induced inflammation or increasing the supply of key metabolic molecules can reduce the severity of rodent aging-related symptoms and increase the likelihood that these treatments may be beneficial to older peopleThe study, published recently in Science, was published in the journal "T cells with the dysfunctional mitochondria ad multi multi and the pretetesen."immunologyat RMIT University in Australia, Kylie Quinn, said the finding satwasacity as "a magical result that directly links metabolism, inflammation and aging." They did a very thorough job to make sure that T-cells caused mice to age rapidly"
as we get older, our T-cells will let us down and become weaker pathogen warriorsThis decline helps explain why older people are more susceptible to infection and less responsive to vaccinesAs T cells age, T cells decline, in part because the mitochondria that act as a power device in the cell begin to failbut T-cells may not just reflect agingThey can also promote agingOlder people have chronic inflammation throughout the body, which researchers believe stimulates agingT-cells may speed up the process because they release molecules that stimulate inflammationimage source: ScienceTo test this hypothesis, Maria Mittelbrunn,immunologist at the University Hospital 12 October Health Institute, and her colleagues genetically engineered mice to make their T-cells missay a protein in their mitochondriaThis change forces cells to switch to less efficient metabolic mechanisms to obtain energythe researchers recently reported in the journal Science that when the rodents reached 7 months old -- usually in the prime of the mouse -- they appeared to be in old ageCompared to normal mice, the modified mice were slow to reactTheir muscles are weak and less resistant to infectionLike many older people, their hearts are weak and their body fat is greatly reducedteam found that T-cells in modified mice released a large number of inflammatory molecules, suggesting that these cells may be partly responsible for the deterioration of the mice's physical condition"The immune system plays a role in accelerating aging," Mittelbrunn saidscientists have also tested whether they can slow agingFirst, they injected mice with a drug that blockstumor
necrosis factor (TNF-alpha), an inflammatory inducing molecule released by T-cells; mittelbrunn and his colleaguesinjected the animals with a compound that raised levels of nichilaminadin dinucleotides (NAD)NAD is a molecule that is essential for the metabolic response of cells to extract energy from foodNAD cell concentrations usually decline with age, and the researchers found that increasing NAD concentrations in mice made them more active and enhanced heart functiondrugs that inhibit TNF-alpha are standard treatments for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease, and several companies now sell compounds that raise NAD levels "It would be a good idea to conduct clinical trials " to determine whether targeting TNF-alpha or NAD can reduce some of the effects of aging, Mittelbrunn said , however, other researchers question the correlation between these results and normal aging Navdeep Chandel, a mitochondrial biologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, points out that mitochondria in genetically modified mice are much more severe than in many older people "For most of us, I bet our T-cells are fine However, he said, Mitochondrial dysfunctional T-cells may cause aging in people who appear to age prematurely and develop age-related diseases at a relatively young age This mechanism may be a factor in the "unhealthy health of 70 or 80-year-olds" Judith Campisi, of Molecular Cell Biology at the Buck Institute, agrees The study" "increases understanding of how the immune system changes with age," she said I don't know to what extent it mimics natural aging (biovalleybioon.com) References: The Scarof immune cells can make us Gabriela Desd?n-Mic?et al.
T cells with dysfunctional mitochondria oed multimorbidity y oesenescence Science 2020 DOI: 10.1126/science.aax0860