Childhood survivors of high-risk neuroblastoma show signs of immune recovery and not immunosenescence
Abstract
Neuroblastoma is a cancer that develops from immature nerve cells and can arise in multiple areas of the body, most commonly in early childhood. Children diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma undergo intensive treatment potentially including radiotherapy, surgery, chemotherapy, targeted biologic therapy and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
As well as aggressively attacking the cancer, this regime also inflicts system-wide damage at the tissue and cellular levels. Cancer treatment in childhood can lead to premature onset of typically age-related conditions including diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease, as well as secondary malignancies, neurocognitive impairment, sarcopenia and osteopenia, and frailty.
This suite of poly-morbidities has been linked with senescent changes in the immune system in elderly individuals, but it is unknown whether these same conditions in childhood cancer survivors (CCS) are similarly underpinned by immunosenescence. Here we compared peripheral blood immune cells and cytokines/chemokines from two cohorts of neuroblastoma CCS (nCCS) (survivors at 1-4 years, and at 5 or more years since diagnosis), healthy children, and elderly patients showing an immunosenescent phenotype in order to understand the effects of neuroblastoma treatment and to screen for signs of immune senescence.