Relation of behaviour and macrophage function to life span in a murine model of premature immunosenescence

According to our previous work, mice of the same strain and age show striking inter-individual differences in behaviour when exposed to a T-maze test. Further. the animals exploring the maze slowly (slow mice) or staying at the starting point (freezing behaviour), which show high levels of emotionality/anxiety in other standard behavioural tests, have a less competent immune system (earlier immunoseneseence) than those which explore it quickly (fast mice). The present longitudinal study on OF-1 Swiss female mice confirms and extends the above findings. Thus, the animals showing a lower performance in the T-test (slow mice) which is accompanied by a poor neuromuscular coordination in a tightrope test, have a shorter life span than the good performers (fast mice). Moreover, the slow mice have a less competent immune system as regards the following functions of peritoneal macrophages: adherence to substrate, chemotaxis, ingestion of particles and superoxide anion production. This suggests that, at the same chronological age and as regards their immune competence, the slow mice are biologically older than the fast mice. This agrees with current ideas on the close functional relationship between the nervous and the immune system in the physiological adaptation to stress, and supports the concept that an optimum level of performance of these two systems is needed to attain a long life span. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.