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Séminaire de Delphine Sauce : "Impact of Inflammatory Status on Resilience in the Elderly"

Delphine Sauce, Sorbonne Université, INSERM U1135, interviendra le 16 juin à 13h30, Module 1.2 bât CROUS 1er étage (Carreire).

Module 1.2 bât CROUS 1er étage (Carreire)

"Impact of Inflammatory Status on Resilience in the Elderly"

Hip fracture (HF) is a common and devastating injury as well as a major health issue in old age. HF has a one-year mortality >30% in the elderly and is a frequent cause of institutionalization. The reasons for such poor outcomes in this trauma are multifactorial but we aim here at identifying immunological factors, which can influence and/or predict the outcome of hip trauma in elderly patients post-surgery. We analyze immunological parameters evocating of the Immune Risk Phenotype in sequential pre- and post-surgical samples collected from HF patients over 75 years of age.

The study revealed that HF is associated with an immune scar depicting a transient T-cell leukopenia and an acute hyper-inflammation. Importantly, we show that blood level of a molecule released by activated macrophages is predictive of one-year mortality in these patients. Its plasmatic level correlated negatively with the time of survival and functional autonomy after HF surgery.  

In conclusion, HF patients exhibit transient changes in innate and adaptive immunity. Meanwhile, profound acute inflammatory processes measurable pre-surgery occur, which are predictive of long-term survival after HF surgery. We propose to use the identified predictive biomarker to improve medical interventions and follow-up of patients at risk of early death.

Biosketch:

Delphine Sauce completed her PhD in « medical biology and clinical research», working on the phenotypic and functional properties of gene-modified cells in the context of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation in Besançon (France). She moved to the University of Birmingham (UK) where she performed her studies on Epstein-Barr Virus infection in the lab of Prof. Alan Rickinson. Since 2006, she is part of the team «Pathogenesis of viral infection» in Pitié-Salpétrière campus (Paris, France), where her work on chronic viral infections emphasizes the impact on persistent viruses on the immune system. In 2011, she obtained a CR1 INSERM position in Cimi-Paris, enabling her to pursue her research in aging of the human immune system. Her goals are now to understand the pathways and mechanisms involved in human immune aging in normal and pathological conditions with a special focus on the ability to response to stress factors.