{"id":1472,"date":"2022-03-23T22:18:54","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T22:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/obesity-and-immune-cells-whats-the-link-medical-news-today\/"},"modified":"2022-03-23T22:18:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T22:18:54","slug":"obesity-and-immune-cells-whats-the-link-medical-news-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/23\/obesity-and-immune-cells-whats-the-link-medical-news-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Obesity and immune cells: What's the link? – Medical News Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

With obesity levels<\/a> in the United States on the rise, researchers are studying what contributes to this condition at a molecular level.
Researchers from Ireland and Germany believe they have isolated specific cells that contribute to the inflammation associated with obesity. Their study, which appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine<\/em><\/a>, addresses how managing certain cell components can help reduce obesity and the risk of related diseases such as type 2 diabetes.
According to 2017\u20132018 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)<\/a><\/hl-trusted-source>, obesity affected 42.4% of adults in the U.S.
Health experts consider people overweight when their body mass index (BMI)<\/a> reaches 25 and obese with a BMI of 30.
Several factors contribute to obesity, including food consumption and activity levels, but researchers are increasingly calling into question the so-called energy balance hypothesis of obesity<\/a>. Trauma, stress, and some medications, such as steroids, can also contribute to weight gain.
Inflammation is a contributing factor to obesity. There are two types of inflammation<\/a>: acute and chronic.
Acute inflammation occurs during an injury or infection. The immune system releases cytokines that aid in healing.
However, chronic inflammation is long lasting and can occur when a person\u2019s immune system is constantly overstimulated. When this occurs, certain functions in the body become dysregulated.
One major health issue relating to chronic inflammation is obesity.
Adipose tissue, or body fat, produces a type of cytokines. Health experts think an excessive amount of these proteins in people with obesity dysregulates the body, which could lead to metabolic disorders and heart disease.
\u201cFat has traditionally been thought of as a passive storage organ for excess energy, but over the past couple of decades, it has been increasingly understood to have a huge number of other roles involved in metabolic signaling,\u201d Dr. Victoria Salem<\/a> said in an interview with Medical News Today<\/em>.
\u201cIt has a rich blood and nerve supply and a complex interaction with the hormonal and immune systems.\u201d
Dr. Salem is a fellow in the Department of Bioengineering and an honorary consultant in Diabetes, Endocrinology, and General Internal Medicine at Victoria at Imperial College London.
The researchers speculated that the molecule PD-L1 plays a role in developing obesity. PD-L1 is a checkpoint protein<\/a> involved in cell signaling within the immune system.
According to the authors, PD-L1 \u201cregulates adipose tissue immune cell composition.\u201d
\u201cIncreasing evidence demonstrates profound dysregulation of the immune system in people with obesity [\u2026] leading to a state of low-grade inflammation,\u201d the authors write.
With this in mind, the researchers compared wild-type mice and mice genetically altered to lack PD-L1 in different types of cells, including dendritic, T cells, macrophages, and innate lymphoid cells. They fed both groups of mice a high fat diet and then compared which group had more weight gain.
They found that the mice lacking PD-L1 on their dendritic cells \u201cgained significantly more weight after 12 weeks\u201d on the high fat diet. This group also had increased insulin resistance, which leads to type 2 diabetes.
According to the authors, \u201cThese results clearly demonstrate a critical role of the immunoregulator PD-L1 for the control of obesity.\u201d
\u201cThis new process of checkpoint regulation of cells in visceral fat of obese individuals advances our understanding of how the immune system controls diet-induced weight gain that can lead to conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes,\u201d says study co-lead author Professor Padraic Fallon<\/a>.
Prof. Fallon is the head of the Translational Immunology Group from Trinity College Dublin\u2019s School of Medicine in Ireland.
After establishing the importance of PD-L1 in obesity with mice, the scientists accessed human studies and found that PD-L1 was \u201cup-regulated\u201d in people with obesity.
\u201cOnly through our basic research efforts using preclinical models were we able to gain access to patients\u2019 samples and link our findings to human disease,\u201d says co-lead author Dr. Christian Schwartz.
Dr. Schwartz is a principal investigator at University Hospital Erlangen in Germany.
The researchers hope that learning the importance of PD-L1 will factor into future weight loss treatments.
\u201cIt will be interesting to investigate now how we can manipulate this checkpoint on specific cell populations of interest to help people with obesity,\u201d says Dr. Schwartz.
Dr. Mir Ali<\/a>, a bariatric surgeon, spoke with MNT<\/em> on the study findings.
\u201cThis article is interesting in that another physiological pathway to obesity seems to be clarified,\u201d commented Dr. Ali. \u201cSince obesity is a complex interaction of hormonal and metabolic interactions, this sheds light on another mechanism.\u201d
In addition to being a surgeon, Dr. Ali is also medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.
Dr. Ali thinks the surgery could give hope to people with obesity in the future.
\u201cPotentially, there is a possibility of finding a safe and effective medication that may block this pathway to obesity,\u201d Dr. Ali said.
Inflammation is the body's healing process, but some people have persistent low-level inflammation. Some anti-inflammatory foods may help with\u2026<\/a>
People often want to lose weight quickly, but there is a risk of malnourishment, or of giving up and putting on more weight than before.<\/a>
Losing weight effectively and keeping it down involves a number of factors. Find out more about how to lose weight.<\/a>
BMI is one way of measuring whether a person\u2019s weight is healthy. It takes both height and weight into account. However, it does not provide an\u2026<\/a>
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With obesity levels in the United States on the rise, researchers are studying what contributes to this condition at a molecular level. Researchers from Ireland and Germany believe they have isolated specific cells that contribute to the inflammation associated with obesity. Their study, which appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine, addresses how managing certain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}