Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2021 Sep 13:10:e72787.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.72787.

Western diet shifts immune cell balance

Christina M Bergey  1
Affiliations
Comment

Western diet shifts immune cell balance

Christina M Bergey. Elife. .

Abstract

The immune cells of macaques fed a Western-like diet adopt a pro-inflammatory profile.

Keywords: behavior; diet; epidemiology; evolutionary mismatch; global health; immunology; inflammation; macaca fascicularis; monocyte.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

CB No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. The Western diet shifts monocytes to be pro-inflammatory in a macaque model
Macaques were fed either Western or Mediterranean-like diets, and the gene expression of their monocytes was profiled. The proportion of pro-inflammatory genes being activated was then computed (shown in graph). This revealed that genes overexpressed in the Mediterranean-like diet (represented by the olive branch) were less likely than chance (marked as zero) to be pro-inflammatory (data shown in green). Genes that were highly expressed in the monocytes of monkeys fed a Western-like diet (represented by the piece of meat) were more likely than expected by chance to be pro-inflammatory (data shown in red). The gene classification was based on prior direct comparisons of pro-inflammatory and regulatory monocytes (Schmidl et al., 2014).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

    1. Camargo A, Delgado-Lista J, Garcia-Rios A, Cruz-Teno C, Yubero-Serrano EM, Perez-Martinez P, Gutierrez-Mariscal FM, Lora-Aguilar P, Rodriguez-Cantalejo F, Fuentes-Jimenez F, Tinahones FJ, Malagon MM, Perez-Jimenez F, Lopez-Miranda J. Expression of proinflammatory, proatherogenic genes is reduced by the Mediterranean diet in elderly people. British Journal of Nutrition. 2012;108:500–508. doi: 10.1017/S0007114511005812. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Cordain L, Eaton SB, Sebastian A, Mann N, Lindeberg S, Watkins BA, O'Keefe JH, Brand-Miller J. Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2005;81:341–354. doi: 10.1093/ajcn.81.2.341. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Devêvre EF, Renovato-Martins M, Clément K, Sautès-Fridman C, Cremer I, Poitou C. Profiling of the three circulating monocyte subpopulations in human obesity. The Journal of Immunology. 2015;194:3917–3923. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.1402655. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Eaton SB, Konner M, Shostak M. Stone agers in the fast lane: Chronic degenerative diseases in evolutionary perspective. The American Journal of Medicine. 1988;84:739–749. doi: 10.1016/0002-9343(88)90113-1. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Furman D, Campisi J, Verdin E, Carrera-Bastos P, Targ S, Franceschi C, Ferrucci L, Gilroy DW, Fasano A, Miller GW, Miller AH, Mantovani A, Weyand CM, Barzilai N, Goronzy JJ, Rando TA, Effros RB, Lucia A, Kleinstreuer N, Slavich GM. Chronic inflammation in the etiology of disease across the life span. Nature Medicine. 2019;25:1822–1832. doi: 10.1038/s41591-019-0675-0. - DOI - PMC - PubMed