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  • Year in Review
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IMMUNOMETABOLISM IN 2019

Immunometabolism of infections

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 20, pages 79–80 (2020)Cite this article

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Physiological studies of infection biology revealed decades ago that there is an intimate relationship between the immune system and the host metabolic system. These interactions begin soon after pathogen detection and continue to evolve over the course of the infection. A relatively recent resurgence in interest in the interface between immunity and metabolism gave rise to the field of ‘immunometabolism’, a term that was coined in 2011. Immunometabolic studies have mainly focused on the cellular level and on non-infectious diseases such as metabolic syndrome, with surprisingly few studies involving infections. In 2019, several studies started to elucidate the relationship between metabolism and the immune response to infectious diseases on both the cellular and the organismal levels. Moreover, 2019 saw the re-emergence of invertebrate animal models to study immunometabolism and infection.

Key advances

  • Modulation of host metabolism can influence host immune response to viral infections.

  • Glycolysis and lactate negatively regulate type I interferon induction and the antiviral response.

  • Type I interferons act on CD8+ T cells and drive whole body weight loss during chronic viral infections, independent of cell-to-cell intrinsic interactions and classic CD8+ T cell mediated cytotoxicity.

  • Invertebrate animal models provide an opportunity to elucidate principles of immunometabolism at the organismal level.

  • Fat wasting caused by an immune response to a perceived pathogenic infection causes a shortened lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Molecular and Systems Physiology Lab, Gene Expression Lab and Nomis Center for Immunobiolgy and Microbial Pathogenesis, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Janelle S. Ayres

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  1. Janelle S. Ayres
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Correspondence to Janelle S. Ayres.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Ayres, J.S. Immunometabolism of infections. Nat Rev Immunol 20, 79–80 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-019-0266-9

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