Abstract
The immune system is essential to provide protection from infections and cancer. Disturbances in immune function can therefore directly affect the health of the affected individual. Many extrinsic and intrinsic factors such as exposure to chemicals, stress, nutrition and age have been reported to influence the immune system. These influences can affect various components of the immune system, and we are just beginning to understand the causalities of these changes. To investigate such disturbances, it is therefore essential to analyze the different components of the immune system in a comprehensive fashion. Here, we demonstrate such an approach which provides information about total number of leukocytes, detailed quantitative and qualitative changes in the composition of lymphocyte subsets, cytokine levels in serum and functional properties of T cells, NK cells and monocytes. Using samples from a cohort of 24 healthy volunteers, we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach to detect changes in immune functions.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all volunteers who participated in this study and we gratefully acknowledge the help of Linda Drenkelforth and Sabine Wingert with sample preparation. We are grateful to Christine Falk and Kerstin Daemen for their help with the Bio-Plex cytokine measurements. Our work is supported by funding of the Leibniz Association (SAW-2013-IfADo-2) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, WA-1552/5-1).
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All procedures performed in this study were approved by the institutional ethics committee and were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Claus, M., Dychus, N., Ebel, M. et al. Measuring the immune system: a comprehensive approach for the analysis of immune functions in humans. Arch Toxicol 90, 2481–2495 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-016-1809-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-016-1809-5