Density of dendritic cells in the human tracheal mucosa is age dependent and site specific

Thomas Tschernig ^1*, Victor de Vries ¹, Anette Debertin ¹, Armin Braun ², Thorsten Walles ³, Frank Traub ¹ and Reinhard Pabst ¹

¹ Hannover Medical School, Germany
² Fraunhofer Institute ITEM, Germany
³ Klinikum Hannover, Germany

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: tschernig.thomas{at}mh-hannover.de.

Accepted 10 July 2006

Abstract

The mucosal immune system undergoes extensive changes in early childhood in response to environmental stimuli. Dendritic cells (DC) play a major role in the development of the immune system. However, few data exist on the influence of continuous environmental stimulation on the distribution and phenotype of human airway DC. Human tissue samples are mostly paraffin embedded which limits the use of several antibodies, and respiratory tissue for cryopreservation is difficult to obtain. Therefore, human post mortem frozen tracheal tissues were collected for this study. Only samples with epithelial adherence to the basement membrane were included (n=34). Immunohistochemical staining and sequential overlay immunofluorescence were performed with DC-SIGN and a panel of leukocyte markers co-expressed by DC. DC detected in the human tracheal mucosa using DC-SIGN correlated with the expression of HLA-DR, co-stimulatory and adhesion molecules. Comparing the ventral tracheal site of patients older than one year of age with infants within the first year of life higher cell densities were found in the former group. The increasing population of mucosal DC could reflect immunological maturation.

Keywords: acquired immunity, age, human dendritic cells, human respiratory mucosa

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