title: Ageing of the B-cell repertoire.
abstract: Older people are more susceptible to infection, less responsive to vaccination and have a more inflammatory immune environment. Using spectratype analysis, we have previously shown that the B-cell repertoire of older people shows evidence of inappropriate clonal expansions in the absence of challenge, and that this loss of B-cell diversity correlates with poor health. Studies on response to vaccination, using both spectratyping and high-throughput sequencing of the repertoire, indicate that older responses to challenge are lacking in magnitude and/or delayed significantly. Also that some of the biologically significant differences may be in different classes of antibody. We have also previously shown that normal young B-cell repertoires can vary between different phenotypic subsets of B cells. In this paper, we present an analysis of immunoglobulin repertoire in different subclasses of antibody in five different populations of B cell, and show how the repertoire in these different groups changes with age. Although some age-related repertoire differences occur in naive cells, before exogenous antigen exposure, we see indications that there is a general dysregulation of the selective forces that shape memory B-cell populations in older people.
authors.affiliation: Division of Infection, Immunity and Inflammatory Disease, King's College London Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, Guys Campus, London, UK.
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics, King's College London Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, Guys Campus, London, UK.
authors.forename: Yu-Chang
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Bryan Wu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cancer and Genetics, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Heath Park, Cardiff, UK.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kipling
authors.affiliation: Division of Infection, Immunity and Inflammatory Disease, King's College London Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, Guys Campus, London, UK deborah.dunn-walters@kcl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Dunn-Walters
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000276:immunology*; D016175:B-Lymphocyte Subsets / Q000276:immunology*; D060966:Clonal Selection, Antigen-Mediated; D006801:Humans; D017578:Immunoglobulin Class Switching; D007136:Immunoglobulins / Q000235:genetics; D007156:Immunologic Memory; D008875:Middle Aged; D060152:V(D)J Recombination; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D007136:Immunoglobulins
keywords: B-cell memory; ageing; immunoglobulin repertoire; subclass of antibody