Climate change can affect the immune system: study

Washington DC: Global warming is capable of inflicting more damage than we think. According to a recent study, heat waves can reduce the body's immune response to the flu. Climate change could affect the future of vaccines and nutrition, suggests a recent study. The climatic phenomenon is expected to reduce yields and nutrient value of crops, as well as broadening the range of disease-spreading insects. However, the effects of heat waves on immunity against influenza have not yet been studied.

In this study, researchers investigated the effects of elevated temperatures on mice infected with the influenza virus. The study was conducted by the University of Tokyo.

"The flu is a disease of the winter. I think that's why nobody else has studied the incidence of high temperatures on the flu, "said Takeshi Ichinohe, principal investigator of the study. .

The flu virus survives better in dry and cold air, so it usually infects more people in the winter. However, Ichinohe is interested in how the body reacts after the infection.

Researchers housed young, healthy adult female mice at either a cold refrigerator temperature (4 degrees Celsius or 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit), or at room temperature (22 C or 71.6 F), or heat (36 or 96.8 F).

When he was infected with the flu, the immune system of mice in hot rooms did not respond effectively. Most people affected by the intense heat were a critical step between the recognition of the influenza virus by the immune system and the development of a specific adaptive response.

Otherwise, the immune system of heat-exposed mice had no other significant change: they had normal reactions to the flu vaccine injected under the skin. In addition, bacteria living in the intestine, increasingly considered important for health, remained normal in mice living in hot rooms.

In particular, mice exposed to high temperatures ate less and lost 10% of their body weight within 24 hours of moving to hot rooms. Their weight stabilized on the second day, then the mice were infected by breathing the live influenza virus on the eighth day of exposure to heat.

Mice living at heat wave temperatures could develop a normal immune response if researchers provided additional nutrition before and after infection. Researchers provided mice with glucose (sugar) or short-chain fatty acids, chemicals naturally produced by intestinal bacteria.

During experiments at room temperature, the researchers surgically connected mice so that the body fluid moved freely between malnourished mice and normally-fed mice, both infected with the flu. Fluids from normally fed mice prompted the immune system of malnourished mice to respond normally to the influenza virus.

"People often lose appetite when they feel sick.If someone stops eating long enough to develop a nutritional deficit, it can weaken the immune system and increase the risk of falling ill," he said. Ichinohe.