AginAging: a portrait from gene expression profile in blood cells: a portrait from gene expression profile in blood cells.. Homo sapiens

In almost every countries the proportion of people over 60 years is growing faster that any other age group. Increased life expectancy is leading to the characterization of specific aspects of aging for the various physiological systems. The study of healthy aging is important to design strategies capable to maximize the health and to prevent chronic diseases in older people. Immunosenscence reflects the age-related changes of the immune system and the reduced capacity of elderly people to cope with new infections. To elucidate changes in gene expression related to systemic aging and immunosenescence in an unbiased manner we performed comparative microarray analysis on whole blood cell from healthy middle-aged versus elderly men, and correlated results with functional measurements of aerobic capacity. Blood cells from elderly subjects showed age-related changes in the expression of several markers of immunosenescence, inflammation and oxidative stress, and showed impairments in metabolic and biosynthetic capacities. Overall design: Whole blood samples from twenty healthy men between the ages of 45-55 (n=11) and 65-75 (n=9) years old were analyzed for this study. For each subject blood was sampled in two different occasions, which were separated by at least 7 days. To preseve RNA quality and integrity 3 ml of blood have been collected intoTEMPUS Blood RNA tubes (ABI, Foster City, CA, USA). Total RNA has been depleted of globin mRNA using the GLOBINclear™-Human kit (Ambion, Austin, TX). To reduce variations due to confounding events, such as spontaneous up- and down-regulation of genes, the two samples of clean RNA from each subject were pooled into one single sample (1ug+1ug RNA).