Malnutrition and Immune Response.

TLDR

Malnutrition impairs cell‑mediated, humoral, and secretory immunity, with even single‑nutrient deficiencies causing immunosuppression and severe malnutrition producing deficits comparable to primary immunodeficiencies, yet no adequate animal model exists. The study proposes using animal models to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying nutritional immunosuppression. Dietary therapy can rapidly reverse nutritional immunodeficiencies, with improvements evident within days of refeeding. Author: (Author).

Abstract

Abstract : There can be no doubt that malnutrition has an adverse impact on immunological functions and can serve to suppress cell-mediated, humoral, and secretory immune competence. While most clinical studies have been performed in patients with generalized forms of malnutrition, immunosuppression has been found to occur with deficiencies of essential single nutrients. Rarely does even a severely malnourished child exhibit the degrees of impairment in any immune function comparable to those experienced in congenital, primary immunodeficiency states. Further, nutritional immunodeficiencies in human beings appear to respond will to dietary therapy, with improvement in some functions becoming evident within a few days of initiating a refeeding program. No entirely satisfactory animal model has yet been developed to replicate human forms of malnutrition. Nevertheless, animal models have considerable potential usefulness for probing the mechanisms of nutritional immunosuppression at the molecular level. (Author)