Dieting or fasting not only helps to lose weight and detoxify the body . A team of researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine (USA) have discovered that a compound produced by the body when dieting or fasting can block an area of the immune system involved in various inflammatory processes, such as type 2 diabetes , atherosclerosis, and Alzheimer’s.
In their study, published in Nature Medicine , the researchers reveal that the compound beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) inhibits the NLRP3 gene , which is part of a complex set of proteins called an inflammasome.
The inflammasome drives the inflammatory response in a number of conditions , including some autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, atherosclerosis, and various autoinflammatory disorders. This finding is important because endogenous metabolites like BHB that block the NLRP3 inflammasome could be effective in fighting many inflammatory diseases, including those in which there are mutations in the NLRP3 genes, according to Vishwa Deep Dixit, professor of Comparative Medicine at the University of Yale.
BHB is a metabolite that the body produces in response to fasting, high-intensity exercise, calorie restriction, or consumption of the low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet. It was already known that fasting and calorie restriction reduce inflammation, but it was not known how immune cells adapt to the reduced availability of glucose and if they can respond to metabolites produced from fat oxidation.
Working with mice and human immune cells, Dixit and his colleagues focused on macrophages, the specialized immune cells that produce inflammation, and their response to ketone bodies and their impact on the inflammasome complex. When they introduced BHB from inflammatory diseases caused by NLP3 to mice, they saw the inflammation decrease, and that it also decreased when the rodents were given a ketogenic diet, which raises the levels of BHB in the bloodstream.
The results suggest that endogenous metabolites such as BHB that are produced during low-carbohydrate diets and fasting or vigorous exercise may reduce the NLRP3 inflammasome.
