Children use the immune system differently than adults, but efficiently.
This is what emerges from a study by Cornell University, published in Science Immunology.
Scientists have long believed that a newborn's immune system is an immature version of that of an adult, but new research shows that newborns' T cells - white blood cells that protect against disease - even outperform those of adults in fighting numerous infections.
Adult T cells outperform newborn T cells in tasks such as recognizing antigens, forming immunological memory, and responding to repeated infections.
But the study found that newborns' T cells are not deficient.
While adult immunity uses adaptive immunity - recognizing specific germs and then fighting them later - newborn immunity is activated by proteins associated with innate immunity, the part of the immune system that offers rapid but non-specific protection against microbes that the body he has never met.
This allows them to do something that most adult immune system cells cannot: respond during the very early stages of an infection and defend themselves against a wide variety of unknown bacteria, parasites and viruses.
"Our paper demonstrates that neonatal T cells are not compromised, they are simply different from those of adults - concludes Brian Rudd, one of the authors of the research - and these differences probably reflect the type of functions that are most useful at different stages of life ".
The findings help clarify why adults and children respond differently to infections and pave the way for controlling T cell behavior for therapeutic applications.
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