HUMAN OROPHARYNGEAL MUCOSAL IMMUNITY OVER TIME, A TALE OF TWO LYMPHOID POPULATIONS

JULIANA PUYSSEGUR; ROCÍO A. PASTOR; LINDYBETH SARMIENTO VARÓN; GONZALO HUSAIN; M. ELENA ARABOLAZA; BIBIANA PAOLI; ELOÍSA I. ARANA

Mar del Plata

Congreso; Congreso Anual Soc Argentina de Inmunologia; 2022

Human paired palatine tonsils are lymphoid epithelial tissues of the oral mucosa around the oropharynx. We have used them as a model to explore the evolution of oropharyngeal mucosal immune respons- es from childhood to youth. Age-related functional changes were ex- plored in our cohort of patients by scoring the percentage of germi- nal center B cells (BGC) within isolated tonsillar mononuclear cells, as a read out of the effector immunological activity of these organs. We found that the proportion of BGC steadily declined with increasing age (n=74, 4 groups of age, means statistically different, p