Submitted on September 30, 2007
Accepted on March 25, 2008
Exercise training enhances in vivo tuberculin purified protein derivative response in the elderly
Mitsuharu Okutsu1, Yuko Yoshida2, Xiumin Zhang3, Akira Tamagawa3, Takayoshi Ohkubo4, Ichiro Tsuji5, and Ryoichi Nagatomi3*
1 Consolidated Research Institute for Advanced Science and Medical Care, Waseda University, Japan
2 Research Team for Promoting Independence of the Elderly, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo, Japan
3 Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan
4 Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Tohoku University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sendai, Japan
5 Department of Public Health and Forensic Medicine, Epidemiology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: nagatomi{at}mail.tains.tohoku.ac.jp.
We investigated the effect of 25 weeks of exercise training on in vivo immune measures that depend on Th1 and Th2 immune responses in the elderly as a sub-study of a randomized controlled trial to investigate health benefits of regular exercise training for the elderly. Sixty-five healthy elderly volunteers were randomly assigned to either an exercise training group (n = 32) or a sedentary control group (n = 33). The area of skin reaction to purified protein derivative (PPD) of tuberculin that depend upon Th1 activation and the concentrations of serum IgG subclasses and IgE were evaluated before and after 25-week intervention. All participants completed 25 weeks of training. Thirty-one participants of the exercise group and all control group underwent immunological analyses, but only 30 from the exercise group and 21 from the control group had the PPD skin reaction assessment. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant interaction between time and exercise intervention, which appeared as an enhanced skin reaction to tuberculin PPD (p < 0.05) and a reduced serum IgG4 concentration, the production of which depends upon Th2 dependent class switching (p < 0.05), in the exercise group after 25 weeks. No immune variable changed in the control group. These result supports the hypothesis that exercise training favors in vivo Th1 immune response in elderly persons.
