ABSTRACT
The authors and some of their prior collaborators have been interested in psychobiological mechanisms in health and relative health. Indeed, different components of the immune system are not uniformly affected by aging. Thus, recent rather than long-term memory tends to decline with aging of both the central nervous system and the immune system. It is important to note that during the period of follow-up there have been only one major health change (herpes zoster) and three deaths. When we looked at psychological-immune relationships, we found that in older people there was a significant relationship between feelings of anger and natural killer NK0 activity during the first year of the study. Immunosenescence, usually considered to occur inevitably with aging, is not found in very healthy elderly persons who live independently. In particular, deep into old age in such persons, NK cell numbers and cytotoxic activity remain equivalent or higher to that in young persons.
