Journal article : Review
Current understanding of innate immune cell dysfunction in childhood undernutrition
- Abstract:
- Undernutrition affects millions of children in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and underlies almost half of all deaths among children under 5 years old. The growth deficits that characterize childhood undernutrition (stunting and wasting) result from simultaneous underlying defects in multiple physiological processes, and current treatment regimens do not completely normalize these pathways. Most deaths among undernourished children are due to infections, indicating that their anti-pathogen immune responses are impaired. Defects in the body's first-line-of-defense against pathogens, the innate immune system, is a plausible yet understudied pathway that could contribute to this increased infection risk. In this review, we discuss the evidence for innate immune cell dysfunction from cohort studies of childhood undernutrition in LMIC, highlighting knowledge gaps in almost all innate immune cell types. We supplement these gaps with insights from relevant experimental models and make recommendations for how human and animal studies could be improved. A better understanding of innate immune function could inform future tractable immune-targeted interventions for childhood undernutrition to reduce mortality and improve long-term health, growth and development.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 841.5KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.3389/fimmu.2019.01728
Authors
- Publisher:
- Frontiers Media
- Journal:
- Frontiers in Immunology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 10
- Article number:
- 1728
- Publication date:
- 2019-07-29
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-07-09
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1664-3224
- ISSN:
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1664-3224
- Pmid:
-
31417545
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Subtype:
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Review
- Pubs id:
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1041840
- Local pid:
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pubs:1041840
- Deposit date:
-
2020-06-15
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Bourke et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Rights statement:
- © 2019 Bourke, Jones and Prendergast. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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