Helps control obesity Discovery of a new immune process that regulates inflammation in fats

Irish and German scientists have identified how certain immune cells can work together in fat to cause inflammation that leads to weight gain and obesity, and have identified new ways to exploit the regulation of this inflammation in fat tissue, thus suggesting new ways to control obesity.

This was stated in the Irish Trinity College Dublin website , which indicated that there is a global epidemic of obesity in adults and children, as obese people tend to develop diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, and new treatments are needed to help address this problem.

In their study, the scientists identified how immune cells and "checkpoint proteins" alter inflammatory cells within fat tissue to cause obesity.

The scientists then showed that alterations in so-called immune checkpoint proteins in mice in a "high-fat" Western diet were associated with dramatic reductions in obesity and diabetes.

Published in March in the International Biomedical Journal of ScienceTranslational Medicine, the study was led by Professor Padrick Fallon of Trinity College Dublin Medical School and Dr Christian Schwartz, a former Trinity Fellow who is now a principal investigator at Erlangen University Hospital.

Immunity and weight gain

Fallon commented that this new process of regulating checkpoint cells in the visceral fat of obese individuals advances our understanding of how the immune system controls diet-induced weight gain that can lead to conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

He added that their discovery has broader implications for addressing how obesity affects comorbidity with other diseases, as demonstrated in the Corona pandemic, where obese individuals with the Corona virus are more likely to develop severe disease that requires intensive care, and they are at increased risk of death.

In their study, Dr. Schwartz said, they analyzed the function of immune checkpoints in specific cells and it was great to see that a small change in one of the many groups of cells in the fat had a significant impact on the outcome of the disease.

He added that, through their basic research efforts using preclinical models, they were able to access patient samples and correlate their findings with human diseases, and it will now be interesting to investigate how these checkpoint proteins can be manipulated on specific cell populations in favor of helping obese people.

The study looked at inflammatory changes in obese patients, with or without type 2 diabetes.