Quantitative peculiarities of immunocompetent cells of the immune organs of old Gnotobionts

Abstract

The immunomorphological analysis of cell subpopulations has been conducted in the primary (thymus, bone marrow) and secondary (spleen, visceral and somatic lymph nodes) immune organs of gnotobiotic and conventional rats in the age aspect. Actually, as it has been shown, the age-related changes in quantitative ratio (at intergroup comparison) of immunocompetent cells in the immune organs of conventional and gnotobiotic rats are unidirectional   in the force of common, genetically determined factors (regardless of environmental antigen exposure). However, it should be also noted a miscellaneous type of aging correlations (at intergroup comparison) of so-called "naive" cells, i.e. T-lymphocytes for thymus and B-lymphocytes for bone marrow. For example, on the background of a sharp age-related reduction in maturation of "naive" T cells in thymus of gnotobionts, an enhancement of proliferative activity of "naive" B cells  in bone marrow of  gnotobionts was observed.  The above-mentioned seems to be necessary to maintain the desired level of B cells in spleen and visceral lymph nodes of the old-aged gnotobionts, thereby contributing to the maintenance of a relatively high immunopoetic potential of the named organs.