Do you know why the elderly are more likely to die than they were in the decades now gone when they contract the seasonal flu? It is at least partly because every year our thymus glands shrink by between 1-3%. This rate is about 3% when were younger, but between ages 35-45 it drops to 1%. If we extrapolate this rate forward and try to determine when we can expect the gland to completely vanish we get a theoretical limit on human life expectancy that is 120 years. This life expectancy is actually also in the Bible btw, Genesis 6:3 (World English Bible translation reads: Yahweh said, My Spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; yet will his days be one hundred twenty years.). The thymus gland is an essential part of the lymphatic system as it is where T cells mature and develop. T cells are the major orchestrators of the bodys adaptive immune response, which is the more specific and efficient but, slower to act, part of the immune system. They stimulate B-cells to produce antibodies and they also endow macrophages and other members of the bodys first-line immune response, the innate immune response, with new and more powerful microbe-killing capabilities. They are also capable of directly attacking cancer cells and infected cells (e.g., cells infected with the seasonal influenza virus). If you want to know what a life without T cells is like, speak to someone with AIDS (the end stage of HIV infection) as a major subset of their T cells (CD4 T cells, or helper T cells; theyre the type of T cells that orchestrate the immune response, as opposed to CD8 or cytotoxic T cells which directly attack cancer cells and infected cells) are specifically targeted and destroyed by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Source: Anatomy & Physiology (that free eBook I mentioned in this post https://facebook/brenton.horne.7/posts/557034067765605. A PDF of it may be found here: cnx.org/exports/[email protected]/anatomy-physiology-6.27.pdf).
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 07:21:53 +0000
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