Vitamin A deficiency enhances the immune system's response to parasitic worm infections in mice.
Malnutrition typically impairs the body's ability to fight infection. But Yasmine Belkaid at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and her team found that depriving mice of vitamin A boosts an arm of the immune system that protects the body's barriers, such as the gut. Animals lacking this vitamin had a much higher level of ILC2 cells — immune cells that are active in barrier defence — in the gut than mice on a normal diet, and were better able to fend off infection by a nematode worm.
Vitamin A deficiency is common in areas where worm infection is also prevalent. The findings suggest a way that the immune system has adapted to promote survival even in the face of malnutrition.
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Poor diet boosts innate immunity. Nature 505, 589 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/505589b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/505589b
