Will Season 2 of GoTc “make the grade”?
Or “Massive Data dump” from Nature Communications proclaims a new world order in quantification of the immune system and immune resilience.
Hello, readers, I’m rising from the dead post Covid! In all honesty, ~ 4 years ago I feared this topic would fade, particularly after data showed smoking (bad) raises your ratio (which should be good, but in this case, it’s bad- confused??)….but science is often puzzling till new data arises. In this particular case, a massive confederation of scientists (quick count ~56 give or take) pooled data from human, nonhuman primates, and mice studies (>20 cohorts and almost 50,000 human subjects) to propose a new immune system classification. On a high level, they decided to make “cut-offs” that classify immune systems as “healthy and resilient” or some varying degree of stress. The cut-offs they determined were CD4 T cells below 800 cells/ml and ratios <1.0. If you had both values above the cut-off, you had an “unstressed” (Grade I) immune system, and both below you had a “very stressed” (Grade IV) immune system. The more stressed an immune system is, the less likely it is to perform well and protect the host. The theory sounds great, but what does the data say?
- Unstressed immune systems are less likely to die from Covid 19, influenza or sepsis and less likely to acquire HIV.
- Women at all ages are more likely to have an “unstressed” immune system then men
- The older we get the more likely we are to have a “stressed” immune system, but the correlation is far from perfect, even some men over 90 have “unstressed” immune systems, but only 10% do.
Conclusion: This “Immune Health Grade” system is both flexible and simple, and it relies heavily on the CD4/CD8 ratio, but whether it is the “final say” is unclear. This is yet another paper the world ignores, or the opening bid in a new chapter of collaboration to really understand and quantify this “beast” we call immunity, remains to be seen.
- Immune resilience despite inflammatory stress promotes longevity and favorable health outcomes including resistance to infection. Ahuja et. al., Nature Communications 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38238-6.