May 2009

Cytokines Change With Age

Loss of smell and taste is associated with many biochemical changes. These changes may be either the result of or the cause of the loss of taste and smell. In an effort to understand some aspects of these changes we measured a series of cytokines in patients with loss of taste and smell.

Cytokines are chemical substances which send signals to various cells to perform specific actions. Cytokines are commonly measured in blood. Cytokines have been reported to change their secretion in relationship to specific diseases. Cytokines have also been reported to change with age — just as smell and taste function have been reported to change with age.

We have measured various cytokines not only in blood but also in urine, saliva and nasal mucus in 79 of our patients with hyposmia (loss of smell). We have discovered that the presence of these cytokines differ with respect to the biological fluid in which they are measured; e.g., IL-1beta was found only in nasal mucus and not in any other fluid. IL-1alpha was found only in nasal mucus and saliva and not in any other fluid.

Cytokine concentration in these fluids varied with age with some cytokines increasing with age, others decreasing with age and others not changing at all.

This study is the first of its kind in which various cytokines and their levels have been compared directly in blood, urine, saliva and nasal mucus.

This study was published in the FASEB Journal, 23:571, 2009, entitled “New data on human cytokine changes with age” with the authors R.I. Henkin, L. Schmidt and I. Velicu.