It’s thymus time, baby!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
The thymus is an organ that produces immune cells during childhood. But it is largely unimportant in adulthood. Or so we thought!
Enter Simon Bernatz and team from Mass General Brigham.
They wanted to see how thymic health is associated with longevity and disease risk. To do this, they used machine learning to quantify thymic health from X-ray images! They applied this to images from over twenty-five thousand adults followed for over a decade.
Results? Adults with a healthier thymus had longer lifespans! Its health is boosted by exercise, sleep, and good dieting.
So don’t discount the thymus, that would be a thymi-riffic mistake!
Bernatz, S., Prudente, V., Pai, S., Attermann, A. K., Cao, Y., Chen, J., Lyass, A., Foldyna, B., Nürnberg, L., Bressem, K., Abbosh, C., Swanton, C., Jamal-Hanjani, M., Lu, M. T., Murabito, J. M., Lunetta, K. L., Birkbak, N. J., & Aerts, H. J. W. L. (2026). Thymic health consequences in adults. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10242-y