Does parental longevity impact on the health ageing of their offspring? An immunological study.

S.Vasto, G. Colonna-Romano, M. Bulati, M.V. Pellicano, C.R. Balistreri, F. Listi, G. Candore, C. Caruso
Immunosenescence Unit, Department of Pathobiology and Biomedical Methodologies, University of Palermo

In the last fourth years, in all the industrialized countries the progressive decline of the mortality (1-2% year) in individuals over-80 years old has risen up of about twenty times the number of oldest old people. So centenarians are not more a curiosity, but in Europe are 1/10000 inhabitants. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the children of centenarians, who are typically in their 70s and 80s, have a survival advantage when compared with age-matched controls whose parents died at an average life expectancy. Furthermore, these individuals demonstrate a reduced relative prevalence as well as a delay in the age of onset for all age-related diseases. Ageing is a universal phenomenon that affects nearly all cells and tissues of individuals. Due to the central role played by immunity in the individual survival, the senescence of immune system has claimed to play a central role in ageing and age-related diseases.

In order to explain and verify the better physical performance along with the lower incidence of age-related diseases among offsprings of centenarians, we hypothesized that a cluster of immune parameters could concur to an increased longevity and to a better health status of offsprings of centenarians. This will allow to establish immunological risks profiles to attain longevity and reciprocally establish disability risks. We studied: 1) a group of centenarian offspring, i.e. subjects born from one long lived parent born between 1900 and 1908 in Sicily, Italy and from one non long living parent (dead at an age not higher than 67 yeas if man and 72 years if woman); 2. a group of 60 control subjects born from both non long lived parents born within the same period of the centenarian (1900-1908) and dead (by non accidental cause) at an age not higher than 67 yeas if man and 72 years if woman. The identification of the major lymphocyte subsets (B lymphocytes, T lymphocytes, CD3/CD4/CD8, virgin T lymphocytes, memory T lymphocytes and NK cells), some of them considered important as immunological markers predictors of mortality, has been performed by flow cytometry analysis using different combination of monoclonal antibodies.

Several differences were observed between the 2 groups, in particular concerning B cells. Data from our experiments showed differences in value on B cell counts between control individuals in the age range from 70 to 85 years old and our studied group of centenarians siblings. In fact naive B cells are more abundant as well as double negative B cells in centenarians children while switched and unswitched B cells seem not vary. These data suggest that naive B cells loss could represent a hallmark of immunosenescence and could be used as a biomarker of human life span and potentially useful for the evaluation of anti-ageing treatment.

Keywords: Centenarians, Immunosenescence, Longevity