Body fat helps fight infections

• Autores: Jessica Hamzelou
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3159, 2018, pág. 16
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Evidence in mice and monkeys suggests it is important for storing essential immune cells and may even boost their effectiveness at fighting infection. Yasmine Belkaid at the US National Institutes of Health and her team have found that a type of immune cell--called a memory T-cell--seems to be stored in the body fat of mice. These cells learn to fight infection. Once exposed to a pathogen, they mount a stronger response the next time they encounter it. When the researchers infected mice with parasites or bacteria, they found that memory T-cells clustered densely in the animals' body fat. Tests showed that these cells seemed to be more effective than those stored in other organs, for example by being better at replicating and at releasing infection-fighting chemicals.