Fig. 1.

Age negatively affects type I IFN and cytokine production. a–e Human PBMCs from the blood of younger (age, 24–36 years; n = 9) and older (age, 67–83 years; n = 9), healthy donors were either stimulated with LPS/IFN-γ, G10, a cGAS-STING-specific agonist or transfected with a retinoic acid–inducible gene I (RIG-I)–specific 3p-hpRNA ligand, or left unstimulated. The unstimulated control for LPS/IFN-γ is complete RPMI, the control for RIG-I is LyoVec only, and the control for G10 is DMSO. The supernatant was collected from PBMCs of all donors 24 h after stimulation and analyzed by Luminex bead-based assay to measure IFN-α (a), IFN-γ (b), IL-6 (c), IL-1β (d), or TNF-α (e) secretion. All concentrations were measured using the human ProcartaPlex 5 Plex from Invitrogen. Data are means ± SEM. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p<0.0001  unpaired, non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test