Editorial

HOLISTIC APPROACH TO AGERELATED RESTRUCTURING OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM QUEST FOR INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE

BRANKO VITALE ; Academy of Medical Sciences of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

Ancient evolutionary involution of thymus in vertebrates is the only physiologic process that shows marked changes in the aging body. Due to thymic involution, immunosenescence is characterized by progressive dysfunction of the adaptive type of immunity mediated by lymphocytes, accompanied by increased activity of the innate type of immunity mediated primarily by macrophages. In the elderly, development of age associated diseases represent a dynamic evolutive stochastic nonlinear process resulting in various physiologic states, which at the same time are predictors of increased multimorbidity and grave infections. Transition from dynamic homeostasis to chaotic behavior can be provoked by bias in cellular interactions
and long lasting imbalanced secretion of proinfl ammatory or anti-infl ammatory chemokines. Whether or not some of the aberrant intra- and or intercellular homeostatic mechanisms in the immune system could propagate pathogenetic events in various clinical manifestations can only be expressed by probability, which depends on the genetic, evolutionary, environmental, epigenetic, and lifestyle factors.

Keywords

thymus involution; immunosenescence; immune system remodeling; macrophages; innate immunity upregulation

Hrčak ID:

261235

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/261235

Publication date:

10.8.2021.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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