Immune cells may help fight against obesity

Until recently, it was thought that the only way to prevent obesity was to eat healthy and exercise. A recent study, published on September 15 in Immunity, indicates that certain aspects of the immune system may also play an important role.

Immune cells help control fat tissues’ release and storage of energy. Fat cells produce various inflammatory molecules that can disrupt the balance established by a normal immune system. Many experts now believe that, in some cases, obesity is an autoimmune inflammatory disorder.

Yair Reisner, of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, conducted a study on mice that lacked certain dendritic immune cells that release a toxic molecule called perforin and began showing symptoms of metabolic syndrome. The mice were also prone to developing autoimmune disorders with symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis.

They also had an irregular amount of T cells, and depleting those T cells prevented the mice that lacked the perforin-expressing cells from gaining weight.

Findings from this study indicate that perforin-expressing dendritic cells are extremely important for protecting against metabolic syndrome and autoimmunity, and shifting the abundance of these cells in relation to other immune cell populations may help prevent or treat such conditions.

“It is hard to predict how this might impact patient care, but we should initially try to find if the absence of this rare subpopulation of cells is associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome, or any autoimmune or other immune abnormalities,” Reisner said.

Source:

EurekAlert.org