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Yo-yo dieting accelerates cardiovascular disease by reprogramming the immune system

Can cycles of dieting increase your risk of heart attack? In mice, an alternating high-fat and low-fat diet promotes plaque build-up in arteries by modulating the body’s innate immune responses.
  1. Daniel J. Rader

    1. Daniel J. Rader is in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.

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  2. Kate Townsend Creasy

    1. Kate Townsend Creasy is in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA, and in the School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania.

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The relationship between diet and cardiovascular disease has been studied for decades and is well-established, yet there is considerable controversy about optimal diets for cardiovascular health1,2. Much of scientists’ understanding of atherosclerosis — a build-up of fatty plaques in blood vessels and the major cause of cardiovascular disease — is from studies in mice that are constantly exposed to a high-fat diet. However, in real life, people vary their diets over time, and yo-yo dieting is common. Although it has been speculated that this pattern of switching back and forth between diets and the resulting changes in body weight is bad for health3, compelling data are lacking and mechanisms are poorly understood. Writing in Nature, two independent and complementary studies4,5 in mice explore the impact of cycling between a high-fat and a low-fat diet and both find that, surprisingly, diet cycling substantially increases atherosclerosis compared with a continuous high-fat diet. These studies support the idea that yo-yo dieting could be bad for the heart and provide insights into the mechanisms through which it might contribute to the acceleration of cardiovascular disease.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03030-z

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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