Cellular Immune Phenotypes and Worsening Scores of Frailty-Associated Parameters Over an 18-Month Period in the Very Old.

Frailty has been related to inflammaging and certain immune parameters. In previous analyses of participants older than 80 years of age in the longitudinal BELFRAIL cohort study, the main focus was on T-cell phenotypes and the association with cytomegalovirus (CMV) serostatus and survival, finding that a CD4:CD8 ratio greater than 5 was associated with frailty, impaired activities of daily living (ADLs), and mortality (but only in women). Here, we phenotyped peripheral blood immune cells via multicolor flow cytometry and correlated these with the dynamics of changes in ADL, geriatric depression score, Mini-Mental State Examination, and Short Physical Performance Battery from baseline values over 18 months follow-up.

Frequencies of peripheral immune cells in older adults following seasonal influenza vaccination with an adjuvanted vaccine.

As age increases, immune responses and consequently protection following vaccination to seasonal influenza is commonly believed to decrease. Possible drivers of this immune dysfunction include immunosenescence, repeated exposure to the same seasonal influenza antigens, and prior infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV). Here, to determine immune parameters distinguishing vaccine humoral responders (R) from non-responders (NR) following vaccination, we surveyed broad peripheral blood "cellular immune correlates" of older adults vaccinated with Fluad® (an adjuvanted subunit influenza vaccine containing strains H1N1, H3N2 and B).

Cytomegalovirus Infection Minimally Affects the Frequencies of B-Cell Phenotypes in Peripheral Blood of Younger and Older Adults.

Background: An accumulation of late-differentiated CD8+ T-cells together with fewer B-cells and seropositivity for cytomegalovirus (CMV) characterises an 'immune risk profile' associated with mortality in elderly people and represents one of the hallmarks of 'immunosenescence'.

Objectives: While differences in memory T-cell phenotypes between young and old people have been intensively studied, and the role of CMV is well-accepted as a driving force in this regard, the impact of CMV on B-cells, if any, has been relatively neglected thus far.

Methods: Here, we avail ourselves of blood samples from participants of the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) to compare peripheral blood B-cell differentiation phenotypes of 140 age- and gender-matched CMV-seronegative or -seropositive adults aged between 24 and 85 years using multicolour flow cytometry analysis.

Altered dendritic cell subset distribution in patients with Parkinson's disease: Impact of CMV serostatus.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by low-level systemic inflammation, which may be at least partly due to pathophysiological activation of immunity. Here, the frequencies of different types of circulating dendritic cells (DCs) with and without a pro-inflammatory phenotype were determined in PD patients and controls. A high proportion of older people is infected with cytomegalovirus (CMV), which acts as a chronic antigenic stressor that could also contribute to increased inflammation.

No strong correlations between serum cytokine levels, CMV serostatus and hand-grip strength in older subjects in the Berlin BASE-II cohort.

Hand-grip strength is strongly correlated with measures of muscle mass and can be taken to predict morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between hand-grip strength and other markers associated with immune ageing, such as Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, leukocyte telomere length and serum levels of inflammatory and anti-inflammatory markers in the elderly. We have assessed grip strength with the Smedley Dynamometer in younger (22-37 years) and older (60-85 years) men and women in a sample of people living in Berlin (the BASE-II study).