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Prieto-Hinojosa et al 2014 BBI Accepted MS.pdf (399.26 kB)

Reduced thymic output in elite athletes

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journal contribution
posted on 2014-08-29, 12:19 authored by Adria Prieto-Hinojosa, Andrea Knight, Claude Compton, Michael Gleeson, Paul J. Travers
Athletes undergoing intensive training schedules have chronic exposure to stress-induced hormones such as cortisol that can depress immune function. We compared the circulating levels of T cell receptor excision circles (TREC), a marker of recent thymic emigrants, as well as the levels of naïve and memory subsets in a group of elite endurance athletes and in controls. The athletes showed a reduction in absolute numbers of naïve T cells, particularly in CD4 T cells. In contrast, memory cells were increased. TREC levels in the athletes were significantly reduced compared to age-matched controls. Such changes resemble premature ageing of the T cell component of the immune system. Since thymic production of T cells naturally decline with age, these results raise the concern that prolonging high intensity exercise into the 4th decade of life may have deleterious consequences for athletes' health. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.

Funding

We acknowledge the support of both the EU FP6 project ‘‘Allostem’’, and the University of Edinburgh in funding this work.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

Volume

39

Pages

75 - 79

Citation

PRIETO-HINOJOSA, A. ... et al., 2014. Reduced thymic output in elite athletes. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 39, pp.75-79.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2014

Notes

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2014.01.004

ISSN

0889-1591

eISSN

1090-2139

Language

  • en

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