Older Skin More Prone To Cancer
The elderly are at a higher risk for developing skin cancer and infections because their skin no longer has the ability to get the immune system to jump to its defense, indicates research from the UK.
Until now, it has been assumed that defective immune cells called “T-cells” were to blame for decreased immunity with age.
Now, is seems that the failure of the skin to draw T-cells to where they are needed is the cause of the problem.
The findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Heading the study, Professor Arne Akbar from University College London said it is well understood that older people experience a drop in their immunity, but its is not clear why or how it happens.
Volunteers were divided into two separate groups, one of 40-year-olds, and one group of those in their 70s. They were then injected with an antigen to stimulate an immune response from T-cells.
The results were as they expected, with the older group having a much weaker immune response than the younger volunteers.
However, when the researchers inspected the T-cells, they found no apparent problems with them.
The older group had a noticeable drop in the ability of the skin to attract T-cells and the signals to direct them to the right place were not there.
Subsequent experiments with skin samples in a test tube revealed that when pushed, the skin was then able to send the necessary signals, giving hope that the problem can be fixed.
"At the outset we thought it would be the cells responsible for combating infections that might be at fault, but the surprising thing was the T-cells were fine but they couldn’t get into the skin – the signals were missing," Akbar said.
This information raised the possibility of ways to boost the immune system in older people and give them a better chance of fighting infection and reducing their risk of developing skin cancer, he said.
"The question that it raises is what survival advantage there is to this, is there a negative reason for having too much immunity in the skin when you get older?
"Going in to intervene may have consequences that we don’t realize and that’s where we need to do more research."
Akbar went on the say that the same immune problems may exist in other body tissues.
Â
Steve Visscher, deputy executive at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, which funded the research, said knowing more about the ageing process is essential considering people have increasingly longer lifespans.
"The more knowledge we have about healthy ageing, the better we get at preventing, managing and treating diseases that are simply a factor of an ageing body."
—
On the Net: