...M. Hartwig Acquisition of immunologic self-tolerance by clonal deletion in the thymus is concluded to be a critical process in immune aging and is found to be transiently protected from genetic instability by means of a feedback surveillance which functions at the expense of chronic thymic...

..., although other cell types and their aging also play a substantial role in this process. Spontaneous genetic instability, acquired genetic mutations due to aging and the age-related alterations in the information level of the body may together be important elements in the pathomechanism of both...