BioProject

Aging and sex have a strong influence on the functional capacity of the immune system. In general, the immune response in females is stronger than that in males, but there is little information about the effect of aging on this difference. To address this question, we performed a transcriptomic analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells derived from nonagenarians and young controls. We found 337 and 269 genes to be differentially expressed (p<0.05, fold change >1.5 or <-1.5) in nonagenarian females and males, respectively; 177 of these were changed in both sexes. An analysis of the affected signaling pathways revealed a clear sex bias: the number of significantly changed pathways was 43 in females and 40 in males; 23 were shared. These data show that the effects of aging on the immune system are significantly different in males and females. Overall design: Our study population consisted of 146 nonagenarians (103 females, 43 males) and 30 young controls (19-30 years of age, 21 females, 9 males). In our study, we analyzed the gene expression difference between nonagenarian and control women as well as between nonagenarian and control males and then compared these results.