A new study from the University of East Anglia and Quadram Institute sheds light on how our immune cells make use of body fat to fight infection. The research, published today in Nature Communications, could lead to new approaches to treating people with bacterial infections.
The work could one day help treat infections in vulnerable and older people, the researchers said. The team studied Salmonella bacteria and tracked fatty acid movement and consumption in live stem cells. They then examined the immune response to Salmonella bacterial infection, by analysing liver damage.
They uncovered how blood stem cells respond to infection, by acquiring high energy fatty acids from the body’s fat stores. In the bone marrow where blood stem cells are resident, infection signals drive adipocytes to release their fat stores as fatty acids into the blood.
And they identified that these high energy fatty acids are then taken up by blood stem cells, effectively feeding the stem cells and enabling them to make millions of Salmonella-fighting white blood cells. The researchers also identified the mechanism by which the fatty acids are transferred and discusses the potential impact this new knowledge could have on future treatment of infection.
Dr Stuart Rushworth, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Our results provide insight into how the blood and immune system is able to respond to infection.
“Fighting infection takes a lot of energy and fat stores are huge energy deposits, which provide the fuel for the blood stem cells to power up the immune response.
“Working out the mechanism through which this ‘fuel boost’ works gives us new ideas on how to strengthen the body’s fight against infection in the future.”
Dr Naiara Beraza, from the Quadram institute, said: “Our results allow us to understand how our immune system uses fat to fuel the response to infection. Defining these mechanisms will enable us to develop new therapeutics to treat infections in the liver.”
Source: University of East Anglia
