Research
Micronutrients & recovery
Aging (immunosenescence) leads to a decline in adaptive immunity, particularly a reduction in naive T cells and thymic involution, increasing susceptibility to infections and reducing vaccine efficacy.
As you age, your immune system naturally changes, making you more susceptible to infections and less responsive to vaccines. While you cannot reverse thymic involution, maintaining optimal nutritional status through diet or targeted supplementation may help mitigate some of these age-related immune declines.
ModerateSupportsHIGH confidence
As the body ages, so does the immune system... There is a loss of lymphoid tissue, particularly in the thymus, with increasing age... The development of long-term immune memory is also impaired, with a diminished response to vaccination.
Why this rating
Review paper summarizing established immunological concepts.
Source
Immune Function and Micronutrient Requirements Change over the Life Course
Silvia Maggini et al. · Nutrients · 2018
DOI 10.3390/nu10101531
narrative_reviewCited 697×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Restoring deficient micronutrients (Vitamins A, C, D, E, B2, B6, B12, folic acid, iron, selenium, zinc) to recommended levels improves immune function and increases resistance to infection.Moderate
- Micronutrient deficiencies (specifically Zinc, Vitamin A, Iron, Selenium) impair both innate and adaptive immune responses, increasing susceptibility to infections like pneumonia, diarrhea, and measles.Moderate
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