ABSTRACT
One of the major goals in research in immunology is to understand the regulatory mechanisms of the immune system. Current research activities in this area are focused on several aspects of the irnmunoregulatory processes. These include: (1) characterization and mechanism of action of helper and suppressor cells (1); (2) characterization of soluble helper and suppressor factors (2); (3) genetic control of immune responses (3); and (4) idiotype-anti-idiotype network interactions (4). The focus of this volume is stress, immunity, and aging. One of the common features between stress and aging is that there is a state of nonspecific immunosuppression in both of these conditions. During the past few years, we have been actively studying the state of nonspecific immunological unresponsiveness associated with certain types of experimental conditions in inbred strains of mice. For instance, tumor-bearing animals (5,6) and animals infected with parasites (7,8) show depressed cellular immune responses. In 1979, Cocito et al. (9) suggested that the nonspecific antigen-induced immunosuppression observed in tumor-bearing mice was similar to the nonspecific suppression associated with sequential antigenic competition. In our laboratory, we have used sequential antigenic competition as a model to study the nonspecific immunosuppressive effects of aging and stress hormones on the immune response.
