Immune-Ageing Evaluation of Peripheral T and NK Lymphocyte Subsets in Chinese Healthy Adults

Abstract

Ageing is often accompanied with a decline in immune system function, resulting in immune ageing. Numerous studies have focussed on the changes in different lymphocyte subsets in diseases and immunosenescence. The change in immune phenotype is a key indication of the diseased or healthy status. However, the changes in lymphocyte number and phenotype brought about by ageing have not been comprehensively analysed. Here, we analysed T and natural killer (NK) cell subsets, the phenotype and cell differentiation states in 43,096 healthy individuals, aged 20–88 years, without known diseases. Thirty-six immune parameters were analysed and the reference ranges of these subsets were established in different age groups divided into 5-year intervals. The data were subjected to random forest machine learning for immune-ageing modelling and confirmed using the neural network analysis. Our initial analysis and machine modelling prediction showed that naïve T cells decreased with ageing, whereas central memory T cells (Tcm) and effector memory T cells (Tem) increased cluster of differentiation (CD) 28-associated T cells. This is the largest study to investigate the correlation between age and immune cell function in a Chinese population, and provides insightful differences, suggesting that healthy adults might be considerably influenced by age and sex. The age of a person's immune system might be different from their chronological age. Our immune-ageing modelling study is one of the largest studies to provide insights into ‘immune-age’ rather than ‘biological-age’. Through machine learning, we identified immune factors influencing the most through ageing and built a model for immune-ageing prediction. Our research not only reveals the impact of age on immune parameter differences within the Chinese population, but also provides new insights for monitoring and preventing some diseases in clinical practice.