The rapid aging of the world population is one of the most serious social shifts taking place in the twenty-first century with an immense impact on different fields, including economics and healthcare. Immune responses are changed with increasing age. Immune aging has considerable impacts on immune operation. Phagocytosis, signaling, and antigen presentation by cells of the innate immune system become impaired over the course of a lifetime. B and naïve T cell populations are reduced in size, with altered phenotypes. Memory lymphocytes and other differentiated cells become immunosenescent, characterized by shortened telomeres, and impaired functionality including class-switch in B cells as well as TCR signaling and cytokine production in T cells. These changes impair responses to infection and vaccination in the elderly. The aging process shows dissimilarity in the changes suffered by each physiological system in the diverse members of a population of the same chronological age. This phenomenon led to the concept of “biological aging,” which ascertains the rate of aging experienced by each person and therefore his/her life quality and expectancy. Because of these reasons, counteracting immunosenescence and developing new immunization strategies for elderly people are considered by the Committee of Exercise Immunology and Aging of the SAPA.
Hence, exercise immunology and aging is an important, emerging sub-discipline within exercise physiology, concerned with the relationship between exercise, immune function, and infection risk in elder people. The attention of the Committee of Exercise Immunology and Aging of the SAPA is on this issue that aging is a natural part of life, and in general, it is associated with a reduced ability of the body to resolve the inflammatory process and balance the immune response. However, a healthy lifestyle with a suitable exercise program can maximize the amount of time certain physiological mechanisms in the body are able to function properly.
The Committee of Exercise Immunology and Aging of the SAPA is devoted to fostering scientific research, education, and the dissemination of scientific information.
The important responsibilities and duties of the Committee of Exercise Immunology and Aging are:
- Provides consultation to the SAPA
- links you to a vibrant network of colleagues
- Helping to develop programs to promote elderly functions
- International role model for other societies through strategic initiatives
- Evaluation of the strengths and limitations of the evidence linking physical activity, immune system integrity, and health
- The globalization of this awareness that exercise is medicine for elderly
- Providing reliable and professional resources for research on exercise immunology and aging
- Holding scientific meetings and conferences
- Providing online seminars for researchers about Exercise immunology and aging.
