Monday, December 10, 2012

Scientists Discover Immune Cells Could Protect Against Obesity

Scientists Discover Immune Cells Could Protect Against Obesity

Well wouldn't this make sense if something went awry in the body to begin with, that started the process of piling on the weight and pounds or affected these immune cells to start? How do you lose weight if you do not have the protection of these cells effectively? What would be interesting to know is why these immune cells are depleted to begin with? I found this study via another article but it had so much blathering about how great weight loss surgery was [what happens when the patients regain the weight?] and idiocy about fat people eating bear claws, I bypassed it and went straight to the source.
New research has found that a type of anti-tumour immune cell protects against obesity and the metabolic syndrome that leads to diabetes. Results showing that immune cells known to be protective against malignancy called invariant natural killer T-cells (iNKT), that are lost when humans become obese, but can be restored through weight loss, have been published online this week in the journal Immunity. Marie Curie Fellow, Lydia Lynch at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland made the discovery and as first author in collaboration with colleagues at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, and St Vincent’s University Hospital have shown that therapies that activate iNKT cells could help manage obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disease. 
  iNKT cells had been thought to be rare in humans until work by Dr Lydia Lynch at Trinity College Dublin, Consultant Endocrinologist at St Vincent’s University Hospital Professor Donal O’Shea, and Trinity’s Professor of Comparative Immunology, Cliona O’Farrelly, found they were plentiful in human omental fat. 
  “We then found a large population of iNKT cells in fat tissue from mice,” said Dr Lynch whose Marie Curie Fellowship gave her the opportunity to work with Mark Exley and Steve Balk both assistant professors of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and leaders in the field of natural killer T-cell (NKT) investigations. “Now we have identified a role for these cells in the regulation of body weight and the metabolic state, likely by regulating inflammation in adipose tissue.” 
The team also discovered that a lipid called alpha-galactosylceramide (aGC) can lead to a dramatic improvement in metabolism, weight loss, and fatty liver disease, and can reverse diabetes by bolstering cells that have been depleted.

No comments:

Post a Comment