Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

August 5, 2019 10:34 am

Possible Link Found Between Body Weight and the Immune System

The Atlantic talked to Lora Hooper, chair of the immunology department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, one of the researchers investigating gut microbes, inflammation, and what may be a very important connection. They note that the rise of antibiotic usage among humans "coincides with the obesity epidemic."This could be a spurious correlation, of course -- lots of things have been on the rise since the '50s. But dismissing it entirely would require ignoring a growing body of evidence that our metabolic health is inseparable from the health of our gut microbes... While other researchers focused on the gut microbiome itself, [Hooper] took an interest in the immune system. Specifically, she wanted to know how an inflammatory response could influence these microscopic populations, and thus be related to weight gain. Over the past decade or so, multiple studies have shown that obese adults mount less effective immune responses to vaccinations, and that both overweight and underweight people have elevated rates of infection. But these were long assumed to be effects of obesity, not causes. "When I started my lab there wasn't much known about how the immune system perceives the gut microbes," Hooper says. "A lot of people thought the gut immune system might be sort of blind to them." To her, it was obvious that this couldn't be the case. The human gut is host to about 100 trillion bacteria. They serve vital metabolic functions, but can quickly kill a person if they get into the bloodstream. "So clearly the immune system has got to be involved in maintaining them," she says. It made sense to her that even subtle changes in the functioning of the immune system could influence microbial populations -- and, hence, weight gain and metabolism. This theory was borne out late last month in a paper in Science... [T]his experiment is a demonstration of principle: The immune system helps control the composition of the gut microbiome. Slashdot reader Beeftopia submitted the story, noting that even the North American Meat Institute, the largest trade group representing meat processors, acknowledges that the use of some antibiotics "can destroy certain bacteria in the gut and help livestock and poultry convert feed to muscle more quickly causing more rapid growth." [PDF, page 4]. "Inflammation plays a critical role in determining how we digest food," writes the Atlantic, "and it's only now starting to reveal itself."

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot