Immune Senescence Project
Immune Senescence Project
The Immune Senescence Project is a collaborative project between the departments of Food Science & Technology and the School of Medicine to assess the effectiveness of whey proteins and peptides, as well as a number of other bioactive nutrients for the prevention of immune senescence in people over 55 years. Immune senescence is the loss of immunological function with aging that leads to impaired ability to fight infection and mount an immune response. In older individuals with immune senescence, not only is the ability to fight infections reduced, so is the ability of the immune system to produce an adaptive immune response to vaccination, rendering vaccines against influenza, pneumonia, and other infectious diseases useless. The collaborative research team is developing ways to assess immune function, as well as nutritional treatments to boost immune function and responsiveness to vaccination.
