The thymus is a small but vital internal organ. Thymocytes generated in the bone marrow migrate to the thymus where they mature into T cells of the adaptive immune system. One of the important contributions to the aging of the immune system is that the thymus steadily atrophies with advancing age, losing active tissue that...
  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    16 days ago

    Thus one needs a therapy that the rest of the body can tolerate or ignore, and so far the only viable means with evidence for modest thymic regrowth are (a) calorie restriction and (b) long-term growth hormone treatment combined with other drugs to blunt the side-effects of growth hormone

    Always seems to come back to calorie restriction, doesn’t it? It’s rough, but it works.

    The cytokine amphiregulin (Areg) is specially implicated in the regenerative function of Treg cells at epithelial surfaces. In the thymus, a population of recirculating Treg cells that migrates between the periphery and the thymus coexists with newly generated Treg cells during negative selection. Here, we examined the role of Treg cells in the regeneration of the thymus after injury. We identified a unique population of Rag2GFP-CD4+Foxp3+ Treg cells that accumulate in the thymus after acute injury. Depletion and adoptive transfer of this cell population impaired and promoted, respectively, thymic repair in mice.

    Hopefully these mouse studies will transfer to humans :)