Immune cells use hunger hormones to aid healing

Dixit, Vishwa Deep

doi:10.1038/d41586-022-02105-z

NEWS AND VIEWS
10 August 2022

Immune cells use hunger hormones to aid healing

Immune cells called monocytes have long been implicated in the killing of invading bacteria. However, a closer look reveals a surprising role for them: monocytes partner with a hormone to improve skin healing after bacterial infection.

Vishwa Deep Dixit⁰

Vishwa Deep Dixit
1. Vishwa Deep Dixit is in the Departments of Pathology, Comparative Medicine and Immunobiology, and at the Yale Center for Research on Aging, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
View author publications

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Access through your institution

Buy or subscribe

Production of the hormone ghrelin from stomach cells stimulates hunger¹, whereas the hormone leptin, which is released from fat cells called adipocytes, acts on the hypothalamus in the brain to inhibit food intake². A loss of appetite is the most common symptom associated with the fever and inflammation that are induced by infection³. To coordinate a successful response to infection and to ultimately restore normal function, the body’s immune, metabolic and nervous systems need to communicate by means of receptors, signalling molecules called cytokines, and hormones⁴. What are the specific restorative signals that dictate tissue healing and repair after infection? Writing in Nature, Kratofil et al.⁵ report a previously unsuspected connection between hormones and immune cells during healing.

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Nature 609, 39-40 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02105-z

References

Müller, T. D. et al. Mol. Metab. 4, 437–460 (2015).
Article PubMed Google Scholar
Friedman, J. M. Nature Metab. 1, 754–765 (2019).
Article PubMed Google Scholar
Dinarello, C. A. J. Endotoxin Res. 10, 201–222 (2004).
PubMed Google Scholar
Besedovsky, H. O. & del Rey, A. Endocr. Rev. 17, 64–102 (1996).
Article PubMed Google Scholar
Kratofil, R. M. et al. Nature 609, 166–173 (2022).
Article Google Scholar
Lee, A. H. & Dixit, V. D. Immunity 53, 510–523 (2020).
Article PubMed Google Scholar
Zhang, L.-J. et al. Science 347, 67–71 (2015).
Article PubMed Google Scholar
Sierra-Honigmann, M. R. et al. Science. 281, 1683–1686 (1998).
Article PubMed Google Scholar
Dixit, V. D. et al. J. Clin. Invest. 114, 57–66 (2004).
Article PubMed Google Scholar