{"id":637512,"date":"2026-04-30T01:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/637512\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T01:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:12:15","slug":"eating-primes-immune-cells-for-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/637512\/","title":{"rendered":"eating primes immune cells for action"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

T cells, shown here attacking a tumour cell, might provide a better defence after a person has eaten.Credit: selvanegra\/Getty<\/p>\n

The best time to get an infection might be after a meal, suggest experiments in mice and humans that found that certain immune cells, known as T cells, seem to get a boost from food.<\/p>\n

The findings, published today in Nature1<\/a>, could identify ways to improve immune therapies, help physicians to decide when to give vaccinations and eventually show how diet can improve immunity.<\/p>\n

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The brain fires up immune cells when sick people are nearby<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s the old adage: starve a fever, feed a cold. And we think that there\u2019s some value in this,\u201d says study co-author Greg Delgoffe, an immunologist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. He thinks that researchers should reassess how diet influences the immune response. \u201cWe don\u2019t really ask, when have you eaten last and what did you eat?\u201d he says. \u201cBut that may make a big difference to how effective those T cells are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is really an exciting study,\u201d says Lionel Apetoh, an immunologist at Indiana University in Indianapolis who was not involved in the work. He notes that previous T-cell research has looked at only long-term interventions of diets.<\/p>\n

Well-fed cells<\/p>\n

T cells are a group of white blood cells that coordinate the body\u2019s immune responses, activating in response to threats. \u201cThe activation of your immune system is incredibly demanding\u201d in terms of energy, says Delgoffe. To investigate this, Delgoffe and his colleagues drew blood from human participants before their first meal of the day and then again after six hours, during which they could eat what they wanted. The team then assessed the metabolic profile of the T cells in the blood.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that after people had eaten, their T cells could more easily access the nutrition required to go through the energy-demanding activation process than when they had fasted overnight. After feeding, the cells were better able to take up sugars, had more fats and more-efficient mitochondria. Ultimately, this boosted the T cells\u2019 ability to respond to threats; experiments in mice showed that the cells were better able to proliferate and to provide protection against infection.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Newfound immune cell in mice hints at why inflammation spikes with old age<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo me, what is surprising is actually the timing,\u201d says Apetoh. \u201cSix hours is definitely not a long time. And still, that has profound consequences on T-cell immunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T cells, shown here attacking a tumour cell, might provide a better defence after a person has eaten.Credit:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,84,1099,2852,13928,1100,66],"class_list":["post-637512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-immunology","tag-molecular-biology","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}