ArticleJournal of biomedical science2011
Thymic function and T cell parameters in a natural human experimental model of seasonal infectious diseases and nutritional burden.
Article in Journal of biomedical science, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Tackling malnutrition: a systematic review of 15-year research evidence from INDEPTH health and demographic surveillance systems.Global health action · 2015Pooled it
- Phenotype of insulin-dependent diabetes in chronic undernutrition: beta cell stress and immune dysfunction-a rural sub-Saharan perspective on type 5 diabetes.Diabetologia · 2025Review
- The influence of early environment and micronutrient availability on developmental epigenetic programming: lessons from the placenta.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2023Review
- Article
- Periconceptional environment predicts leukocyte telomere length in a cross-sectional study of 7-9 year old rural Gambian children.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Type 1 Diabetes in a Resource-Poor Setting: Malnutrition Related, Malnutrition Modified, or Just Diabetes?Current diabetes reports · 2018Review
- Telomere Dynamics in Immune Senescence and Exhaustion Triggered by Chronic Viral Infection.Viruses · 2017Review
- Early life nutritional programming of health and disease in The Gambia.Journal of developmental origins of health and disease · 2016Review
- Monitoring immune modulation by nutrition in the general population: identifying and substantiating effects on human health.The British journal of nutrition · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe study exploits a natural human experimental model of subsistence farmers experiencing chronic and seasonally modified food shortages and infectious burden. Two seasons existed, one of increased deprivation and infections (Jul-Dec), another of abundance and low infections (Jan-Jun); referred to as the hungry/high infection and harvest/low infection seasons respectively. Prior analysis showed a 10-fold excess in infectious disease associated mortality in young adults born in the hungry/high infection versus harvest/low infection season, and reduced thymic output and T cell counts in infancy. Here we report findings on the role of early life stressors as contributors to the onset of T cell immunological defects in later life.
methodsWe hypothesised that season of birth effects on thymic function and T cell immunity would be detectable in young adults since Kaplan-Meier survival curves indicated this to be the time of greatest mortality divergence. T cell subset analyses by flow-cytometry, sjTRECs, TCRVβ repertoire and telomere length by PCR, were performed on samples from 60 males (18-23 y) selected to represent births in the hungry/high infection and harvest/low infection
resultsTotal lymphocyte counts were normal and did not differ by birth season. CD3+ and CD4+ but not CD8+ counts were lower for those born during the hungry/high infection season. CD8+ telomere length also tended to be shorter. Overall, CD8+ TCRVβ repertoire skewing was observed with 'public' expressions and deletions seen in TCRVβ12/22 and TCRVβ24, respectively but no apparent effect of birth season.
conclusionsWe conclude that, although thymic function was unchanged, the CD4+ and CD3+ counts, and CD8+ telomere length results suggested that aspects of adult T cell immunity were under the influence of early life stressors. The endemicity of CMV and HBV suggested that chronic infections may modulate immunity through T cell repertoire development. The overall implications being that, this population is at an elevated risk of premature immunosenescence possibly driven by a combination of nutritional and infectious burden.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.