Immunoregulatory functions of appetite controlling brain circuits

众所周知，饮食的改变会显著影响我们的免疫系统。禁食或摄入更少的卡路里有助于从炎症和传染病中恢复。然而，暴饮暴食和肥胖会增加我们对疾病的易感性。一般来说，人们认为这是因为我们吃的食物为我们的身体提供了正常运作所需的能量，包括我们的免疫系统。所以，饮食的改变会直接影响我们免疫系统的运作。人们也逐渐了解到，我们的大脑控制着我们的食物摄入量，当我们吃得太多或太少时，除了影响身体的能量水平外，我们还会影响大脑及其代谢感应网络的工作方式。事实上，我们大脑中专门的神经细胞能感知我们吃了多少食物，并在我们饿或饱的时候发出信号。这些细胞共同调节我们的饥饿感和饱腹感，调节我们的食物摄入量，确保我们的身体获得所需的营养。然而，这些神经细胞是否也会影响我们的免疫系统是完全未知的。令人惊讶的是，我们最初的研究支持这样一种观点，即大脑中控制饥饿感和饱腹感的神经细胞也可以直接调节我们的免疫系统。在这个项目中，我们正在进一步研究这个新想法。为了了解更多，我们将使用最新的技术来选择性地激活或停用这些特定的神经细胞，并研究它们对免疫系统的影响以及这些影响是如何发生的。我们希望我们的研究能够推进现有的知识，为大脑如何控制免疫系统以及饮食变化如何影响我们的健康提供新的理解。这可能会导致对免疫相关疾病（如炎症和感染）的新治疗方法，以及对炎症性疾病的更好理解和潜在的未来治疗方法，这些疾病在患有肥胖和代谢综合征的人群中非常普遍。

It is widely known that changes in our diet can significantly impact our immune system. Fasting or consuming fewer calories can aid in recovery from inflammatory and infectious diseases. However, overeating and obesity can increase our susceptibility to illness. Generally, it is believed that this is because the food we eat provides the fuel our body needs to function properly, including our immune system. So, changes in our diet can directly affect how well our immune system works. What's is also becoming well understood is that our brain controls our food intake and that when we eat too much or too little, in addition to impacting on the body energy levels, we also affect how the brain and its metabolic-sensing network work. Indeed, specialised nerve cells in our brain sense how much food we have consumed and signal when we are hungry or full. These cells work together to regulate our feelings of hunger and satiety, to regulate our food intake and make sure our body gets the nutrients it needs. However, whether these nerve cells can also affect our immune system is completely unknown. Surprisingly, our initial research supports the idea that the nerve cells in the brain that control hunger and fullness can also directly regulate our immune system. In this project, we are investigating this new idea further. To learn more, we will use the latest technologies to selectively activate or deactivate these specific nerve cells and study their effects on the immune system and how these effects take place.We hope that our research will advance current knoledge, providing a new understanding of how the brain controls the immune system and how dietary changes can impact our health. This could lead to new treatments for immune-related diseases such as inflammation and infection, as well as a better understanding and potential future treatments for inflammatory diseases, which are highly prevalent in people leaving with obesity and metabolic syndrome.