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The ageing immune system: is it ever too old to become young again?

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 9, pages 57–62 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Ageing is accompanied by a decline in the function of the immune system, which increases susceptibility to infections and can decrease the quality of life. The ability to rejuvenate the ageing immune system would therefore be beneficial for elderly individuals and would decrease health-care costs for society. But is the immune system ever too old to become young again? We review here the promise of various approaches to rejuvenate the function of the immune system in the rapidly growing ageing population.

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Figure 1: The proportion of individuals aged 60 years or older is projected to increase.
Figure 2: Effects of ageing on lymphocyte production and the distribution of cells in secondary lymphoid tissues.

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Acknowledgements

Work from our laboratory was supported by grant AG21450 from the National Institutes of Health, USA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Encarnacion Montecino-Rodriguez and Robert A. J. Signer are at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Kenneth Dorshkind, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.,

    Kenneth Dorshkind, Encarnacion Montecino-Rodriguez & Robert A. J. Signer

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  1. Kenneth Dorshkind
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Correspondence to Kenneth Dorshkind.

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Dorshkind, K., Montecino-Rodriguez, E. & Signer, R. The ageing immune system: is it ever too old to become young again?. Nat Rev Immunol 9, 57–62 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri2471

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