PA03_02 - Wartime metabolism; how the immune system rewires our body in response to infection

PA03_02

Wartime metabolism; how the immune system rewires our body in response to infection

F. M. Wensveen^1,*

¹faculty of medicine, Histology and Embryology, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia

 

Abstract: Being sick makes you feel miserable. Whereas we experience this as a pathology, after all, we’re feeling bad, in fact it is not. It is a carefully orchestrated and highly conserved physiological response that is mediated by the immune system. In response to an infection, or another serious threat to the body, the immune system alters systemic metabolism, which is what we experience as being sick. Apparently, this misery somehow helps your body better deal with the underlying cause of the immune response. Surprisingly, very little is known about how or why this happens, but recent discoveries have shed more light on its cause. In this presentation, I will highlight some key mechanisms of how the immune alters systemic metabolism and how it helps the antipathogenic immune response. Importantly, I will elucidate how targeting of some of these systems may help alleviate key negative aspects of non-communicable diseases such as cancer, thus contributing to the efficacy of therapy and quality of life of patients.

Disclosure of Interest: None declared