Adiposity, immunity, and inflammation: interrelationships in health and disease: a report from 24th Annual Harvard Nutrition Obesity Symposium, June 2023

Mehmet Furkan Burak; Takara L Stanley; Elizabeth A Lawson; Sophia L Campbell; Lydia Lynch; Alyssa H Hasty; Ana I Domingos; Vishwa D Dixit; Gökhan S Hotamışlıgil; Frederick J Sheedy; Anne E Dixon; Tina E Brinkley; Joseph A Hill; Marc Y Donath; Steven K Grinspoon

doi:10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.04.029

Adiposity, immunity, and inflammation: interrelationships in health and disease: a report from 24th Annual Harvard Nutrition Obesity Symposium, June 2023

Am J Clin Nutr. 2024 May 3:S0002-9165(24)00455-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.04.029. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Department of Molecular Metabolism and Sabri Ülker Center, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States. Electronic address: mfburak@mgb.org.
² Metabolism Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
³ Neuroendocrine Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
⁴ Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
⁵ Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Nashville, TN, United States.
⁶ Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom; The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York, NY, United States.
⁷ Department of Pathology, Department of Comparative Medicine, Department of Immunobiology, Yale School of Medicine, and Yale Center for Research on Aging, New Haven, CT, United States.
⁸ Department of Molecular Metabolism and Sabri Ülker Center, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States.
⁹ School of Biochemistry & Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
¹⁰ Department of Medicine, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, United States.
¹¹ Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, United States.
¹² Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Molecular Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States.
¹³ Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Clinic of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

PMID: 38705359
DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.04.029

Abstract

The rapidly evolving field of immunometabolism explores how changes in local immune environments may affect key metabolic and cellular processes, including that of adipose tissue. Importantly, these changes may contribute to low-grade systemic inflammation. In turn, chronic low-grade inflammation affecting adipose tissue may exacerbate the outcome of metabolic diseases. Novel advances in our understanding of immunometabolic processes may critically lead to interventions to reduce disease severity and progression. An important example in this regard relates to obesity, which has a multifaceted effect on immunity, activating the proinflammatory pathways such as the inflammasome and disrupting cellular homeostasis. This multifaceted effect of obesity can be investigated through study of downstream conditions using cellular and systemic investigative techniques. To further explore this field, the National Institutes of Health P30 Nutrition Obesity Research Center at Harvard, in partnership with Harvard Medical School, assembled experts to present at its 24th Annual Symposium entitled "Adiposity, Immunity, and Inflammation: Interrelationships in Health and Disease" on 7 June, 2023. This manuscript seeks to synthesize and present key findings from the symposium, highlighting new research and novel disease-specific advances in the field. Better understanding the interaction between metabolism and immunity offers promising preventative and treatment therapies for obesity-related immunometabolic diseases.

Keywords: diet; immunity; immunometabolism; inflammation; obesity.