Our life is largely driven by memes now. Some positive memes, some negative and many memes with mission. Mission to hijack our thought processes. In meme driven information intake, we lost our patience to understand nature by real science.
Microbes (bacteria and viruses) become virulent when the host body’s environment support them to proliferate (for several reasons). Till then , they are not making any direct harm to us. For example, any bad thought (For example, thought of looting the bank) is impotent until the thought-host has will to execute it. Similarly, many viruses stay dormant in our body and become active when they are asked to (by host body condition).
Read this post to understand it better:
https://prachodayat.in/ancient-viruses-lurk-dna/
Now, let us come to the point.
Our immune system is at its peak when we’re young, but after a certain age, it declines and it becomes more difficult for our bodies to fight off new infections.
“That’s why older people are more susceptible to infections than younger people,” explains Janko Nikolich-Žugich, MD, PhD, co-director or the University of Arizona Center on Aging and chairman of the Department of Immunobiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson.
In search of a way to rejuvenate the immune system of older adults, Dr. Nikolich-Žugich and Megan Smithey, PhD, have found that one particular virus may not weaken, but actually enhance our immune system. Their findings are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For the study, the researchers infected mice with the cytomegalovirus (CMV). The virus affects more than half of all individuals and is contracted, for most part, at a young age. Because there is no cure, the virus is carried for life, and is particularly prevalent in older adults.
“CMV doesn’t usually cause outward symptoms, but we still have to live with it every day since there’s no cure,” Dr. Smithey says. “Our immune system always will be busy in the background dealing with this virus.”
Drs. Smithey and Nikolich-Žugich wondered how this lifelong virus ultimately affects the immune system.
“We assumed it would make mice more vulnerable to other infections because it was using up resources and keeping the immune system busy,” Dr. Smithey said.
For years, immunobiologists assumed that T-cell diversity decreased as we age. This was one of the reasons why older adults succumbed to disease more easily.
But Drs. Smithey and Nikolich-Žugich’s study shows that T-cells are almost as diverse in old mice as they are in young mice. The problem is that diverse T-cells are not recruited to the battlefield in older mice — unless they are infected with CMV.
Dr. Nikolich-Žugich explains, “It’s as if CMV is issuing a signal that gets the best defenses out onto the field.”
So..CMV viral infection in childhood is necessary to maintain immunity response in old age! This raises question about the level panic and fear we have developed recently for microbes. We must remain alert, more conscious and perform social distancing as many hosts are infected. But if that results into panic and fear about microbes forever, it will act against the health in future. When things become normal, be more subtle and sensitive about self. Focus more on Prana and mind for better health.
https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/virus-may-boost-not-weaken-our-immune-systems
Research
Lifelong CMV infection improves immune defense in old mice by broadening the mobilized TCR repertoire against third-party infection
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/29/E6817
Epidemiological studies have shown a correlation between CMV infection and immune system aging, especially in elderly populations. It remains unclear whether CMV infection is a key driver of, or simply a factor associated with, aging of the immune system. We show that aging in the presence of lifelong CMV infection improves T cell immunity in old animals by broadening the immune response to a different pathogen. Animals that have aged with CMV are able to recruit novel T cells into these immune responses that are present in, but not utilized in, animals aging without CMV. These data squarely challenge the premise that CMV is solely detrimental to the aging of the adaptive immune system.
