Age-related relationships among peripheral B lymphocyte subpopulations

An immunological data-driven model is proposed, for age related changes in the network of relationships among cell quantities of eight peripheral B lymphocyte subpopulations, that is, cells exhibiting all combinations of three specific receptor clusters (CD27, CD23, CD5). The model is based on immunological data (quantities of cells exhibiting CD19, characterizing B lymphocytes) from about six thousands patients, having an age ranging between one day and ninety-five years, by means of a suitably combination of data analysis methods, such as piecewise linear regression models. With relaxed values for statistically significant models (coefficient p-values bounded by 0.05), we found a network holding for all ages, that likely represents the general assessment of adaptive immune system for healthy human beings. When statistical validation comes to be more restrictive, we found that some of these interactions are lost with aging, as widely observed in medical literature. Namely, interesting (inverse or directed) proportions are highlighted among mutual quantities of a partition of peripheral B lymphocytes.

I. Introduction

According to the immune network theory formulated by Jerne [1] (called also Jernes hypothesis), and further developed by Perelson [2], the immune response is based not only on the interaction of B-cells and antigens but also on the interactions of B-cells with other B-cells. Despite outstanding achievements on this front, we currently have more questions than answers. The idea of an immune network, in terms of idiotype anti-idiotype relations, as a regulatory mechanism of the immune system is quite attractive, since it enables us to explain the selectivity (specificity) and the clonal selection. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how the network of immune cells is organized, how it operates, and how it exerts control over autoimmunity and/or infection, and there are no concrete applications in modern and fundamental immunology [3].