Western diet makes our immune system hyperactive - vascular disease favors

Western diet makes the immune system hyperactive: Vascular diseases are favored

On a high-fat and high-calorie diet, the immune system reacts similar to a bacterial infection. Even long after the change to healthy diet, the body's defense remains hyperactive. This is shown by a recent study led by the University of Bonn. The scientists used mice for a month on a so-called Western diet: high in fat, high in sugar, low in fiber. The animals then developed a massive inflammation - almost like after infection by dangerous bacteria.

"The unhealthy diet has led to an unexpected increase in some immune cells in the blood, indicating that progenitor cells in the bone marrow are involved in the inflammatory process," said Anette Christ from the Institute for Innate Immunity at the University of Bonn. From these progenitor cells develop blood-circulating immune cells.

This is called genetic reprogramming of the innate immune system: "Genomic studies show that a large number of genes are activated in the progenitor cells by the Western diet, so the unhealthy diet causes the body to quickly and undesirably overpower a huge powerful combat force recruited, "explains Professor Joachim Schultze of the Life & Medical Sciences Institute (LIMES) at the University of Bonn.

This "combat troop" - actually important for the defense against bacteria and viruses - can accelerate the development of vascular diseases drastically: In arteriosclerosis the typical vascular deposits, the plaques, consist mainly of fats and immune cells. The inflammatory reaction contributes directly to their growth; because constantly new activated immune cells migrate into the altered vessel walls. When the plaques become too large, they burst, are carried away by the bloodstream and can clog other vessels. Possible consequences are stroke and heart attack.

Especially fatal: If the scientists offered the rodents now for four more weeks typical type of grain diet, the acute inflammation disappeared, but not the genetic reprogramming of immune cells: Even after these four weeks many of the hereditary factors were still active in them, the "fast food Phase "had been switched on. Professor Eicke Latz, Director of the Institute for Innate Immunity of the University of Bonn and a scientist at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE): "We only recently discovered that the innate immune system has memory." After infection, body defense remains in one Kind of alert state, so that they can respond more quickly to a new attack. " In the mice, this process was not triggered by microorganisms, but by an unhealthy diet.

The scientists then developed a cell culture system with isolated immune cells from human blood. They even identified the "fastfood sensor" in the immune cells. They were able to show that a change in the genetic code - caused by certain food ingredients - has an impact on memory development and the associated overshoot immune response.

Malnutrition can have dramatic consequences. In the past centuries, average life expectancy has steadily increased in western countries. This trend is being broken for the first time: Anyone born today will probably live shorter on average than his parents. Wrong eating and too little exercise should have a decisive part in it. Rüdiger Lobitz, bzfe