Objective: To investigate the effect of surgical thymectomy on immune function and peripheral blood T lymphocytes of a mouse model.
Methods: Neonatal (aged 72 hours) and infant (aged 1 week) BALB/c mice were randomly divided into two groups with 20 mice in each group, respectively. The mice of surgical group underwent a surgical thymectomy; the sham operation group excluded the thymectomy procedure. Then surgical group and sham operation group were randomly divided into two subgroups with 10 mice in each group, respectively. One subgroup was sacrificed one month after operation; the other was sacrificed two months after operation. To evaluate thymic function and peripheral T cell populations, T cell receptor rearrangement excision circles (TREC) were assessed by real-time quantitative PCR and T lymphocyte and its subset were detected by flow cytometry.
Results: The levels of peripheral T cell populations and TREC of the operation group were significantly lower than those of the sham operation group (P<0.01). There were no significant differences in the measurements between neonatal and infant mice or between one month after operation and two months after operation (P>0.05).
Conclusion: Thymectomy in young mice can make damage on T cell immune system. The damage may continue in a long term and the age of operation maybe don't have an effect on it.