Thymic function and T cell parameters in a natural human experimental model of seasonal infectious diseases and nutritional burden
| dc.contributor.author | Ngom, P. T. | - |
| dc.contributor.author | Solon, J. | - |
| dc.contributor.author | Moore, S. E. | - |
| dc.contributor.author | Morgan, G. | - |
| dc.contributor.author | Prentice, A. M. | - |
| dc.contributor.author | Aspinall, Richard | - |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2011-10-13T23:12:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2011-10-13T23:12:15Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2011-06-15T00:00:00Z | - |
| dc.description.abstract | BACKGROUND:The study exploits a natural human experimental model of subsistence farmers experiencing chronic and seasonally modified food shortages and infectious burden. Two seasons existed, one of increased deprivation and infections (Jul-Dec), another of abundance and low infections (Jan-Jun); referred to as the hungry/high infection and harvest/low infection seasons respectively. Prior analysis showed a 10-fold excess in infectious disease associated mortality in young adults born in the hungry/high infection versus harvest/low infection season, and reduced thymic output and T cell counts in infancy. Here we report findings on the role of early life stressors as contributors to the onset of T cell immunological defects in later life. METHODS:We hypothesised that season of birth effects on thymic function and T cell immunity would be detectable in young adults since Kaplan-Meier survival curves indicated this to be the time of greatest mortality divergence. T cell subset analyses by flow-cytometry, sjTRECs, TCRVβ repertoire and telomere length by PCR, were performed on samples from 60 males (18-23 y) selected to represent births in the hungry/high infection and harvest/low infection RESULTS:Total lymphocyte counts were normal and did not differ by birth season. CD3+ and CD4+ but not CD8+ counts were lower for those born during the hungry/high infection season. CD8+ telomere length also tended to be shorter. Overall, CD8+ TCRVβ repertoire skewing was observed with 'public' expressions and deletions seen in TCRVβ12/22 and TCRVβ24, respectively but no apparent effect of birth season. CONCLUSIONS:We conclude that, although thymic function was unchanged, the CD4+ and CD3+ counts, and CD8+ telomere length results suggested that aspects of adult T cell immunity were under the influence of early life stressors. The endemicity of CMV and HBV suggested that chronic infections may modulate immunity through T cell repertoire development. The overall implications being that, this population is at an elevated risk of premature immunosenescence possibly driven by a combination of nutritional and infectious bur | en_UK |
| dc.identifier.citation | Pa T. Ngom, Juan Solon, Sophie E. Moore, Gareth Morgan, Andrew M. Prentice and Richard Aspinall,Thymic function and T cell parameters in a natural human experimental model of seasonal infectious diseases and nutritional, Journal of Biomedical Science, 2011, Volume 18, Issue 41. | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 1021-7770 | - |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1423-0127-18-41 | - |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/6448 | |
| dc.publisher | S. Karger AG / BioMed Central | en_UK |
| dc.title | Thymic function and T cell parameters in a natural human experimental model of seasonal infectious diseases and nutritional burden | en_UK |
| dc.type | Article | - |