Fasting has been suggested as a way to prevent or manage chronic diseases, but mice studies show prolonged fasts may impair the immune system
at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and his colleagues analysed blood and tissues samples from five mice without access to food for 24 hours. Blood tests comparing these mice with those given a regular diet showed that, on average, the fasting mice had less than 10 per cent of the number of monocytes – a type of white blood cell that helps fight infections and recruits other immune cells to treat injury.
“These are the cells that are really critical foot soldiers of the immune system,” says Swirski. The researchers found the decrease was due to monocytes retreating from the blood to the bone marrow, where they essentially hibernated, he says.As a result, when the fasting mice were given food again, monocytes rushed back into their bloodstream.
To understand how this affected immunity, he and his team injected 45 mice with a strain of bacteria that infects the lungs. Twenty-three of the mice fasted for 24 hours before the injection. The researchers then allowed them to access food.After 72 hours, nearly 90 per cent of the mice that fasted died, while about 60 per cent of the mice that never fasted died. The mice on restricted diets also had greater levels of inflammation, suggesting that long periods of fasting impair immune responses.
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