Susceptibility to apoptosis of T lymphocytes from elderly humans is associated with increased in vivo expression of functional Fas receptors.

We recently showed that mature T lymphocytes derived from elderly humans were more susceptible to activation-induced cell death than similar cells from young individuals. Because this excessive apoptosis is unrelated to either the age-associated decrease in IL-2 production, a differential Bcl-2 expression or to a modification of the antioxidant pathway, we examined the possibility that the Fas receptor (FasR) is directly implicated in the generation of the unwarranted death signal. We investigated the expression and the function of FasR on T lymphocyte populations from healthy young and elderly individuals. We found that the frequency of FasR+ T cells increases as a function of age. The FasR expressed at the surface of freshly isolated T lymphocytes from elderly donors appear to be fully functional since their ligation by a cytocidal IgM anti-Fas mAb leads to a significant increase in DNA fragmentation in this cell population. Conversely, exposure of T cells derived from aged individuals to an antagonistic anti-FasR mAb partially prevents the age-related increase in apoptotic cell death. The population of FasR+ T lymphocytes is essentially constituted of previously activated CD45RO+ cells and also includes recently activated lymphocytes bearing the CD25 and CD69 activation markers. The accumulation of chronically and recently in vivo activated T-cells with age probably contributes to the amplification of the process of Fas-mediated cell death in T lymphocytes isolated from senescent organisms.