Age-associated changes in lymphocyte metabolism of dairy calves

Dairy calves have the necessary immune cell machinery to mount an effective immune response. However, their lympho­cytes often fail to fully respond to parenteral vaccination un­til 6 months of age, limiting vaccine effectiveness during the first months of life. Lymphocytes’ mitochondrial functionality drives effector functions critical for vaccine responsiveness. However, the extent to which lymphocyte mitochondrial func­tion changes with age and could explain this poor vaccination response remains unknown. Thus, we aimed to determine how the mitochondrial function of dairy calf lymphocytes changes with age from birth to immunologic maturity. Given lympho­cyte dependency on mitochondrial efficiency, we hypothesized that the mitochondrial efficiency of dairy calf lymphocytes in­creases with age.