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The role of immune response in ageing and longevity. A focus on B cell compartment
Full text linkThe improvement of the quality of life of elderly people is going to
become a priority because of the continuous increase in the number
of centenarians. This render the studies of the processes involved in
ageing of critical importance. Centenarians are a widely accepted
model of successful ageing, a complex process which is influenced by
several biological, environmental and lifestyle factors, because they
have reached the extreme limits of life span overcoming the major
age-related diseases. In centenarians model, several aspects have been
studied, as inflammation, immune system, genetics and metabolism,
to understand the secret of their long survival. It has been proposed
that centenarians are characterized by more efficient protective molecules
and biochemical pathways, and show well preserved immune
functions
CARATTERIZZAZIONE FENOTIPICA E FUNZIONALE DELLE CELLULE B (CD19+), PLASMACELLULE (CD38+++) DOPPIO NEGATIVE (IgD-CD27-) SU SANGUE MIDOLLARE NEI PAZIENTI CON MGUS E MM
Full text linkB CELL CHANGES IN AGING
Full text linkThe aging of the immune system is a gradual and dynamic process that modifies some immunological functions. These changes are known as “immunosenescence” that have a great impact on immune performance in late life, contributing to the decreased ability of the elderly people to respond to emerging pathogens and to the decreased responsiveness to vaccinations. It is known that the adaptive immune functions are affected in the aged. In particular, with aging, the acquired compartment of the immune system shows significant modifications in both T and B cell branches. Thus, the adaptive immune response of elderly people is qualitatively and quantitatively reduced when compared to that observed in young people. Lifelong and chronic antigenic load are the major driving forces of this process that is associated with a general increase in the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and other inflammatory molecules that render elderly people prone to frailty and susceptible to major age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). On the other hand, centenarians represent an example of successful aging because they have delayed diseases that normally cause mortality in the general population. The aim of this thesis is to study changes in immune system with age, also focusing on people genetically advantaged for healthy ageing (Centenarian Offspring) or unsuccessfully aged patients (Alzheimer’s Disease), paying attention principally on the naïve/memory B cell compartments. The presented data suggest that the study of naïve/memory B and T cell compartments may be relevant in the evaluation of biological ageing of the immune system
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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