Adaptive Immunity and Metabolic Health: Harmony Becomes Dissonant in Obesity and Aging

作者：L. Bharath, Blanche C. Ip, B. Nikolajczyk · 发表于：Comprehensive Physiology · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.1002/j.2040-4603.2017.tb00780.x · 被引用次数：20 · 研究领域：Medicine

Adipose tissue (AT) is the primary energy reservoir organ, and thereby plays a critical role in energy homeostasis and regulation of metabolism. AT expands in response to chronic overnutrition or aging and becomes a major source of inflammation that has marked influence on systemic metabolism. The chronic, sterile inflammation that occurs in the AT during the development of obesity or in aging contributes to onset of devastating diseases such as insulin resistance, diabetes, and cardiovascular pathologies. Numerous studies have shown that inflammation in the visceral AT of humans and animals is a critical trigger for the development of metabolic syndrome. This work underscores the well‐supported conclusion that the inflammatory immune response and metabolic pathways in the AT are tightly interwoven by multiple layers of relatively conserved mechanisms. During the development of diet‐induced obesity or age‐associated adiposity, cells of the innate and the adaptive immune systems infiltrate and proliferate in the AT. Macrophages, which dominate AT‐associated immune cells in mouse models of obesity, but are less dominant in obese people, have been studied extensively. However, cells of the adaptive immune system, including T cells and B cells, contribute significantly to AT inflammation, perhaps more in humans than in mice. Lymphocytes regulate recruitment of innate immune cells into AT, and produce cytokines that influence the helpful‐to‐harmful inflammatory balance that, in tu...