The Effects of Exercise on the Molecular Mechanisms of Inflammation

众所周知，运动对人体生理的几个方面都有重大影响。最近，《纽约时报》等几家主要新闻媒体一直在报道运动在改善大脑功能、降低癌症风险和改变免疫功能方面的效果，以及这如何影响流感感染的易感性。事实上，研究表明，各种运动活动会影响我们对抗感染的能力，特别是上呼吸道感染(URTI)。这是因为适度的运动可以增强我们的免疫系统，从而保护我们免受细菌和病毒的感染，而长时间的高强度运动则会产生相反的效果。这反过来又对尿路感染的发生率以及运动员在最高水平上进行训练和竞争的能力产生了重要影响。目前尚不清楚锻炼是如何以及为什么调节免疫反应的。这项建议旨在回答这两个问题。具体地说，我们的研究有三个目标：1)了解各种运动活动改变我们免疫反应的潜在机制；2)识别有效训练的新生物标记物，我们在其中确定哪些体力活动模式会导致已知增强免疫功能的基因的丰富；3)确定运动如何改变免疫细胞的代谢状态。目前关于运动对免疫反应的影响以及随后对URTI易感性的影响的知识在很大程度上是描述性的，在许多情况下是轶事。我们的研究将在运动免疫学领域取得重要进展，并可用于提出修改训练和恢复活动的策略，不仅可以减少与训练相关的URTI的发生率，还可以优化免疫功能，改善运动员和经常参加体育活动的个人的健康状况。

Exercise has been known to have significant effects on several aspects of human physiology. Recently, several major news outlets like the New York Times have been reporting on the effects of exercise on improving brain function, reducing cancer risk, and altering immune function and how that impacts the susceptibility to flu infections. Indeed, studies have shown that various exercise activities can affect our ability to fight infections, particularly upper respiratory tract infections (URTI). This happens because moderate exercise can boost our immune system and thereby protects us from bacterial and viral infections, whereas prolonged and intensive exercise has the opposite effect. This, in turn, has important implications on the incidence of URTI and on the ability of athletes to train and compete at the highest levels. How and why exercise modulates the immune response remains unclear. This proposal aims at answering these two questions. Specifically, our research has three objectives: 1) understand the underlying mechanism through which various exercise activities change our immune response; 2) identify novel biomarkers of effective training, where we determine which physical activity patterns causes an enrichment in genes that are known to enhance immune function; 3) determine how exercise alters the metabolic status of immune cells. The current knowledge regarding the effects of exercise on the immune response and the subsequent effect on URTI susceptibility is largely descriptive and in many cases anecdotal. Our studies will lead to an important advancement in the field of exercise immunology, and can be used to suggest strategies for modifying training and recovery activities to not only reduce the incidence of training-related URTI, but also optimize immune function and improve the wellbeing of athletes and physically active individuals.