A new study reveals that injecting beta-glucan can enhance our immune system training.
According to the Korea Research Foundation, on the 30th, a research team led by Professor Choi Eun-young of Ulsan University’s Seoul Asan Hospital found that beta-glucan, an immune training inducer, enhances the phagocytic function of resident macrophages in the lungs, and increases lung damage resistance in surrounding epithelial cells, thereby alleviating pulmonary fibrosis.
Immune cells attack and remove foreign invaders such as bacteria and viruses.
Innate immune training, which has resistance to reinfection in innate immune function, is a process in which these innate immune cells form memories of pathogens and prepare to better respond to secondary attacks.
Professor Choi’s team investigated whether training the innate immune system in a tissue could also suppress damage to other tissues.
To train the innate immune system, they directly injected beta-glucan into the abdominal cavity of experimental rats and then induced pulmonary fibrosis.
As a result, not only did the mortality rate of the rats decrease, but the accumulation of collagen, one of the symptoms of pulmonary fibrosis, also decreased.
Such beta-glucan immune training also caused changes in immune cells and surrounding lung cells.
The number of neutrophils, innate immune cells infiltrating the lungs, and lung macrophages increased, and the phagocytic function that removes damaged cells also improved.
It also caused specific changes in the genes of immune cells and nearby lung cells.
It promoted the production of Resolvin D1, which helps reduce tissue damage and delivers a survival signal (Sirt 1) to lung epithelial cells, resisting cell death.
When neutrophils were removed, the effect of immune training decreased, suggesting that neutrophils play a crucial role in this immune training.
Professor Choi explained, “Most mammalian organs have resident macrophages, and neutrophils infiltrate when needed, so the results of this study suggest the possibility of suppressing damage and disorders in various organs, not just the lungs.”
The results of this study were published in the international academic journal Advanced Science.
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