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Western Diet Triggers Immune System To Be More Aggressive

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Mice were used to check the effect of a so-called “Western diet”: high in fat, high in sugar, and low in fiber. The animals consequently developed a strong inflammatory response throughout the body, almost like after infection with dangerous bacteria.

“The unhealthy diet led to an unexpected increase in the number of certain immune cells in the blood of the mice, especially granulocytes and monocytes. This was an indication of an involvement of immune cell progenitors in the bone marrow,” Anette Christ, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute of Innate Immunity of the University of Bonn explains.

Bone marrow progenitors for major immune cell types were isolated from mice fed a Western diet or healthy control diet and a systematic analysis of their function and activation state was performed.

“Genomic studies did, in fact, show that the Western diet had activated a large number of genes in the progenitor cells. The genes affected included those responsible for proliferation and maturation”, explains Prof. Dr. Joachim Schultze from the Life & Medical Sciences Institute (LIMES) at the University of Bonn and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE).

After four weeks, the mice were switched to a cereal diet, the acute inflammation disappeared. What did not disappear was the genetic reprogramming of the immune cells and their precursors: Even after these four weeks, many of the genes that had been switched on during the fast food phase were still active.

“It has only recently been discovered that the innate immune system has a form of memory”, explains Prof. Dr. Eicke Latz, Director of the Institute for Innate Immunity of the University of Bonn and scientist at the DZNE. “After an infection, the body’s defenses remain in a kind of alarm state, so that they can respond more quickly to a new attack.” Experts call this “innate immune training”. In the mice, this process was not triggered by a bacterium, but by an unhealthy diet.

Long-Term Consequences of Inflammatory Cells

The scientists were further able to identify the responsible “fast food sensor” in immune cells. They examined blood cells from 120 subjects. In some of the subjects, the innate immune system showed a particularly strong training effect.

In these subjects, the research team found genetic evidence of the involvement of a so-called inflammasome. Inflammasomes are key intracellular signaling complexes that recognize infectious agents and other harmful substances and subsequently release highly inflammatory messengers. How exactly the NLRP3 inflammasome recognizes the exposure of the body to Western-type diets remains to be determined.

Interestingly, in addition to the acute inflammatory response, this also has long-term consequences for the immune system’s responses: The activation by Western diet changes the way in which the genetic information is packaged. The genetic material is stored in the DNA and each cell contains several DNA strands, which together are about two meters long. However, they are typically wrapped around certain proteins in the nucleus and thus many genes in the DNA cannot be read as they are simply too inaccessible.

Unhealthy eating causes some of these normally hidden pieces of DNA to unwind, similar to a loop hanging out of a ball of wool. This area of the genetic material can then be read much easier as long as this temporary unwrapping remains active. Scientists call these phenomena epigenetic changes. “The inflammasome triggers such epigenetic changes”, explains Dr. Latz. “The immune system consequently reacts even to small stimuli with stronger inflammatory responses.”

Dietary Change in The Community

These inflammatory responses can, in turn, accelerate the development of vascular diseases or type 2 diabetes. In arteriosclerosis, for example, the typical vascular deposits, the plaques, consist largely of lipids and immune cells.

The inflammatory reaction contributes directly to their growth because newly activated immune cells constantly migrate into the altered vessel walls. When the plaques grow too large, they can burst, leading to blood clotting and are carried away by the bloodstream and can clog vessels. Possible consequences: Stroke or heart attack.

“These findings, therefore, have important societal relevance”, explains Latz. “The foundations of a healthy diet need to become a much more prominent part of education than they are at present. Only in this way can we immunize children at an early stage against the temptations of the food industry. Children have a choice of what they eat every day. We should enable them to make conscious decisions regarding their dietary habits.”

Reference
Anette Christ, Patrick Günther, Mario A.R. Lauterbach, Peter Duewell, Debjani Biswas, Karin Pelka, Claus J. Scholz, Marije Oosting, Kristian Haendler, Kevin Baßler, Kathrin Klee, Jonas Schulte-Schrepping, Thomas Ulas, Simone J.C.F.M. Moorlag, Vinod Kumar, Min Hi Park, Leo A.B. Joosten, Laszlo A. Groh, Niels P. Riksen, Terje Espevik, Andreas Schlitzer, Yang Li, Michael L. Fitzgerald, Mihai G. Netea, Joachim L. Schultze, Eicke Latz. ‘Western Diet Triggers NLRP3-Dependent Innate Immune Reprogramming.’Cell (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2017.12.013.

Source: http://www.medindia.net/news/healthwatch/western-diet-triggers-immune-system-to-be-more-aggressive-176180-1.htm

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Autoimmunity Plays A Role In Parkinson’s Disease Confirms Study!!

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A new study co-led by scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) adds increasing evidence that Parkinson’s disease is partly an autoimmune disease. In fact, the researchers report that signs of autoimmunity can appear in Parkinson’s disease patients years before their official diagnosis.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The research could make it possible to someday detect Parkinson’s disease before the onset of debilitating motor symptoms—and potentially intervene with therapies to slow the disease progression.

Scientists have long known that clumps of a damaged protein called alpha-synuclein build up in the dopamine-producing brain cells of patients with Parkinson’s disease. These clumps eventually lead to cell death, causing motor symptoms and cognitive decline.

“Once these cells are gone, they’re gone. So if you are able to diagnose the disease as early as possible, it could make a huge difference,” says LJI research assistant professor Cecilia Lindestam Arlehamn, Ph.D., who served as first author of the new study.

A 2017 study led by Sette and Sulzer was the first to show that alpha-synuclein can act as a beacon for certain T cells, causing them to mistakenly attack brain cells and potentially contribute to the progression of Parkinson’s. This was the first direct evidence that autoimmunity could play a role in Parkinson’s disease.

The new findings shed light on the timeline of T cell reactivity and disease progression. The researchers looked at blood samples from a large group of Parkinson’s disease patients and compared their T cells to a healthy, age-matched control group. They found that the T cells that react to alpha-synuclein are most abundant when patients are first diagnosed with the disease. These T cells tend to disappear as the disease progresses, and few patients still have them ten years after diagnosis.

The researchers also did an in-depth analysis of one Parkinson’s disease patient who happened to have blood samples preserved going back long before his diagnosis. This case study showed that the patient had a strong T cell response to alpha-synuclein ten years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Again, these T cells faded away in the years following diagnosis.

“This tells us that detection of T cell responses could help in the diagnosis of people at risk or in early stages of disease development, when many of the symptoms have not been detected yet,” says Sette. “Importantly, we could dream of a scenario where early interference with T cell responses could prevent the disease from manifesting itself or progressing.”

Sulzer added, “One of the most important findings is that the flavor of the T cells changes during the course of the disease, starting with more aggressive cells, moving to less aggressive cells that may inhibit the immune response, and after about 10 years, disappearing altogether. It is almost as if immune responses in Parkinson’s disease are like those that occur during seasonal flu, except that the changes take place over ten years instead of a week.”

In fact, already therapies exist to treat inflammation from autoreactive T cells, and these TNF therapies are associated with lower incidence of Parkinson’s disease. Going forward, the researchers are especially interested in using a tool called a T cell-based assay to monitor patients already at risk for Parkinson’s to see if they could benefit from TNF therapies. These patients include people with REM sleep disorders and certain genetic mutations.

The researchers hope to study more Parkinson’s patients and follow them over longer time periods to better understand how T cell reactivity changes as the disease progresses.

Source: https://medicaldialogues.in/neurology-neurosurgery/news/autoimmunity-plays-a-role-in-parkinsons-disease-confirms-study-65053

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Think Before You Get A Tattoo; Toxic Nanoparticles May Harm Your Immune System

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A new study reveals that the toxic particles can enlarge lymph nodes.


Getting a permanent tattoo can cause toxic nanoparticles to travel inside the body, leading to chronic enlargement of the lymph nodes – an important part of our immune system, a study has warned.

Toxic impurities that make up the ink in tattoos can travel inside the body in the form of nanoparticles and affect the lymph nodes, researchers said.

Little is known about the potential impurities in the colour mixture applied to the skin. Most tattoo inks contain organic pigments, but also include preservatives and contaminants like nickel, chromium, manganese or cobalt.

Besides carbon black, the second most common ingredient used in tattoo inks is titanium dioxide (TiO2), a white pigment usually applied to create certain shades when mixed with colorant, researchers said.

TiO2 is also commonly used in food additives, sunscreens and paints. Delayed healing, along with skin elevation and itching, are often associated with white tattoos, and by consequence with the use of TiO2.

The hazards that potentially derive from tattoos were previously known only by chemical analysis of the inks and their degradation products in vitro.

Researchers at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Germany used X-ray fluorescence measurements which allowed them to locate titanium dioxide at the micro and nano range in the skin and the lymphatic environment.

They found a broad range of particles up to several micrometres in size in human skin, but only smaller (nano) particles were transported to the lymph nodes.

This may lead to the chronic enlargement of the lymph node and lifelong exposure, researchers said.

Scientists also used the technique of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to assess biomolecular changes in the tissues in the proximity of the tattoo particles.

“We already knew that pigments from tattoos would travel to the lymph nodes because of visual evidence. The lymph nodes become tinted with the colour of the tattoo. It is the response of the body to clean the site of entrance of the tattoo,” researchers said.

“What we didn’t know is that they do it in a nano form, which implies that they may not have the same behaviour as the particles at a micro level. And that is the problem we don’t know how nanoparticles react,” said Bernhard Hesse, from ESRF The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/health/report-think-before-you-get-a-tattoo-toxic-nanoparticles-in-inks-may-harm-your-immune-system-2545283

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