Quantification of dendritic cell subsets in human thymus tissues of various ages

BACKGROUND: Dendritic cells (DCs) in the thymus are involved in central tolerance formation, but they also have other functions in the thymus, such as pathogen recognition. The density changes of human thymic DCs have been hardly investigated. In this study, human thymus samples of various ages were collected for tissue sectioning and staining. The thymic cortex and medulla area as well as the densities of various subsets of thymic DCs were calculated. RESULTS: All common DC subsets were found in the human thymus of various ages. Most DCs had accumulated in the human thymic epithelial space, especially the medulla. We also found that the human thymic cortex had atrophied relatively faster than the medulla, which led to a gradual increase of the area ratio of the medulla to cortex with the increase of age. The densities of DC subsets in the human thymus showed various changes with increasing age, which contributed to the composition changes of DC subsets. The density of plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs) in the human thymus had increased gradually with aging, which suggested that pDCs plays another essential role in the thymus in addition to central tolerance. CONCLUSIONS: Inconsistent with the shrinking of the epithelial space in the thymus, the densities of DC subsets in the epithelial space of the thymus are maintained at a constant level with aging to preserve highly efficient autoreactive thymocyte screening. An increasing density of the thymic pDCs with aging implies an extra function of DCs in the thymus beyond central tolerance. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12979-021-00255-8.