Inflammation Happens with Every Meal

Several members of our support group are skeptical of this article and have told me that they don't believe much of this. They do admit that some people are susceptible to the inflammation more than others.

When we eat, we do not just take in nutrients - we also consume a significant quantity of bacteria. The body is faced with the challenge of simultaneously distributing the ingested glucose and fighting these bacteria. This triggers an inflammatory response that activates the immune systems of healthy individuals and has a protective effect, as doctors from the University and the University Hospital Basel have proven for the first time. In overweight individuals, however, this inflammatory response fails so dramatically that it can lead to diabetes.

It is well known that type 2 diabetes (or adult-onset diabetes) leads to chronic inflammation with a range of negative impacts. A number of clinical studies have therefore treated diabetes by impeding the over-production of a substance involved in this process, Interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta). In diabetes patients, this messenger substance triggers chronic inflammation and causes insulin-producing beta cells to die off.

This inflammation does have some positive aspects, however, as was recently reported in the journal Nature Immunology by researchers from the Department of Biomedicine at the University and the University Hospital Basel. In healthy individuals, short-term inflammatory responses play an important role in sugar uptake and the activation of the immune system.

In their work, Professor Marc Donath, Head of the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University Hospital Basel and his research team demonstrate that the number of macrophages (a type of immune cell) around the intestines increases during meal times. These so-called "scavenger cells­" produce the messenger substance IL-1beta in varying amounts, depending on the concentration of glucose in the blood. This, in turn, stimulates insulin production in pancreatic beta cells. The insulin then causes the macrophages to increase IL-1beta production. Insulin and IL-1beta work together to regulate blood sugar levels, while the messenger substance IL-1beta ensures that the immune system is supplied with glucose and thus remains active.

According to the researchers, this mechanism of the metabolism and immune system is dependent on the bacteria and nutrients that are ingested during meals. With sufficient nutrients, the immune system is able to adequately combat foreign bacteria. Conversely, when there is a lack of nutrients, the few remaining calories must be conserved for important life functions at the expense of an immune response. This may go some way towards explaining why infectious diseases occur more frequently in times of famine.

This last paragraph was where the members of the support group said this is the reason that we have Allison monitoring our nutrient intake and have our doctors test for the vitamins and minerals we might be deficient in per Allison.

Quick Test to Detect Inflammation in PWD

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a new kit that will allow doctors to find out within minutes if diabetic patients are suffering from inflammation.

Current procedures require patients to wait for several hours for the results obtained from the conventional full blood count test.

Also, instead of a vial of blood in the present method, the new test kit only needs a drop of blood to test if a patient is suffering from inflammation caused by abnormal immune cell activation.

In conventional procedures, blood cells need to be physically separated for analyzing, which is time consuming and laborious, while the new test kit does this automatically.

This made-in-Singapore test kit may also see the cost of such tests becoming more affordable as it costs less than a dollar to produce.

Diabetes is a serious health problem, which affects about 10 per cent of the world's population. Singapore has the second-highest proportion of diabetics among developed nations at 10.53 per cent, as estimated by International Diabetes Federation (IDF) in 2015.

Type 2 diabetes is the most common and is usually treated with lifestyle changes, medication and insulin. If diabetic patients can be grouped based on their inflammation status in addition to glucose level, then doctors can better choose the treatment best suited for their patients.

Dr Hou Han Wei, a senior research fellow from NTU's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine invented the new chip that forms the key component of the test kit.

"By designing very tiny channels on our chip, we are able to physically separate the various blood cells by size into the different outlets, like a coin-sorting machine," explained Dr Hou.

White blood cells form a significant part of our body's immune system and a key type known as neutrophils, is the first line of defense whenever infection or inflammation strikes.

"Analyzing these separated neutrophils could help indicate how bad an inflammation is and if there is an increased risk of infection for diabetic patients," said Dr Hou.

Dr Hou's new chip and research findings were published earlier this year in Scientific Reports, a peer-reviewed scientific journal under the Nature Publishing Group.

"Hopefully in future, clinicians can accurately tailor the right combination of drugs and thus offer a more targeted treatment approach for all diabetic patients," added Dr Hou, the recipient of the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellowship offered by the medical school in 2014.

The NTU team discovered that neutrophils could be used as a biomarker to determine if diabetic patients are suffering from an inflammation. Using the new test kit, neutrophils can be easily extracted from a blood sample, and their behavior and function observed for more efficient inflammation profiling in additional to the cell count.

In healthy individuals, neutrophils float free in the blood stream. When there is an acute inflammation such as during a bacterial or viral infection, they will slow down and roll along the vessel walls. Once near the site of infection, they squeeze through the vessel walls and move to the site of the injury.

In diabetic patients, the neutrophils roll faster, which means that fewer of them will manage to squeeze through the vessel wall to tackle the infection.

The increased rolling speeds of neutrophils correlate closely with cholesterol and c-reactive protein levels (a biomarker for inflammation) so it provides doctors with a better indicator of an individual's immune status, Dr Hou explained.

Please read the entire article, as it is a lengthy article.