From rxpgnews.com
Thymic recovery restores T cells
By Journal of Clinical Investigation,
Mar 18, 2005 - 11:05:38 PM
New immune T cells mature in the thymus throughout life, but the aging thymus works less effectively and this is especially problematic in people who are immunocompromised.
In a study appearing online on March 17, in advance of the April 1 print edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Frances Hakim and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health examine the mechanism underlying this age-related alteration in thymic function. The researchers studied thymic size in adults with breast cancer who were recovering from chemotherapy.
They demonstrate that the thymus can continue to grow for over a year after chemotherapy. This is not because the adult thymus is simply being filled back up with T cell precursors, but instead it is actually undergoing a long period of structural regrowth with new T cell generation. This is the first time that the immunocompromised adult thymus has been shown to be able to restore circulating T cell populations to normal levels and has implications for recovery from disease, infection, and chemotherapy.
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