In young people, the immune system contains many naive T cells, a type of white blood cell. Over time, exposure to pathogens and vaccinations transforms some of these T cells into memory cells, which can respond quickly to defend the body against germs.
In a new study, published Friday (Oct. 9) in the journal Immunity, scientists found that individuals with more memory cells that make granzyme K than cells that make granzyme B tend to have healthier aging.
Hunting for a signature of healthy aging
In earlier research, the same team found that, in old lab mice, granzyme K-making cells accumulated in several tissues and were linked to inflammation. They also observed the same increase in granzyme K cells in blood samples from older adults.
They began by analyzing immune cells sampled from over 2,600 people ages 18 to 97, looking at the balance of granzyme K- and granzyme B-making cells. They found that people with a lower ratio of granzyme K to granzyme B cell populations were more likely to have autoimmune diseases or other chronic immune conditions.
The balance of cells that make different granzymes may be important to how the immune system functions with age. (Image credit: RUSLANAS BARANAUSKAS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)
They went on to hunt for this protein signature in around 48,000 participants who'd provided data to the UK Biobank, a large database of health data from U.K.-based adults. People who were predicted to have higher levels of granzyme B-making cells based on their blood proteins had worse health outcomes in the following 17 years, with a higher risk of death and of conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and liver and kidney disease.
"I think that's really exciting," Claire Gustafson, an immunologist at the Allen Institute, said of the results. "It highlights there's potentially some novel biology that we haven't really observed before," Gustafson, who was not involved in the research, told Live Science.
"This observation might be just a consequence, not a cause of the disease," Artyomov noted.
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In people, immune cells' features can also vary across diverse human populations, Gustafson added. We need more data across different populations to get a "true understanding of universal immune health," she said. The K-to-B ratio may be a "novel" clue that can help scientists understand healthy aging, but more data is needed to unpack why and how that ratio is linked to healthy or unhealthy aging.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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