Research Article Splenic Stromal Cells from Aged Mice Produce Higher Levels of IL-6 Compared to Young Mice

Copyright © 2014 Jihyun Park et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Inflamm-aging indicates the chronic inflammatory state resulting from increased secretion of proinflammatory cytokines and mediators such as IL-6 in the elderly. Our principle objective was to identify cell types that were affected with aging concerning IL-6 secretion in the murine model. We compared IL-6 production in spleen cells from both young and aged mice and isolated several types of cells from spleen and investigated IL-6 mRNA expression and protein production. IL-6 protein productions in cultured stromal cells from agedmice spleen were significantly high compared to youngmice upon LPS stimulation. IL-6 mRNA expression level of freshly isolated stromal cells from aged mice was high compared to young mice. Furthermore, stromal cells of aged mice highly expressed IL-6 mRNA after LPS injection in vivo. These results suggest that stromal cells play a role in producing IL-6 in aged mice and imply that they contribute to the chronic inflammatory condition in the elderly. 1