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Nutrition and Immunity: An Overview¹

Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine, Division of Immunology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Nutritional Immunology, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Historical accounts and recent epidemiologic studies have suggested a mutually aggravating relationship between malnutrition and infection. In protein-energy malnutrition, there is a significant impairment of several aspects of immunity, including cell-mediated immune responses, secretory immunoglobulin A antibody production, phagocyte function, complement system, antibody affinity and cytokine production. Several micronutrients play a crucial role in maintenance of optimum immune responses. On the other hand, excessive intake of nutrients also impairs immunity. Animals fed diets lacking in nucleotides have lower immune responses than controls but there is no enhancement of immunity when the diet contains large amounts of nucleotides. These observations have considerable practical importance in terms of designing feeding formulas.

KEY WORDS: • immunocompetence • cell-mediated immunity • nucleotides • cytokines

¹ Presented as part of the symposium "Dietary Nucleotides: A Recently Demonstrated Requirement for Cellular Development and Immune Function" given at the Experimental Biology '93 meeting, New Orleans, LA, March 31, 1993. This symposium, sponsored by the American Institute of Nutrition and the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, was supported by grants from Mead Johnson Research Center, Ross Laboratories, a division of Abbott Laboratories, Sandoz Nutrition and Wyeth-Ayerst International. Guest editor for this symposium was Frederick B. Rudolph, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX.

² To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Department of Pediatrics, Janeway Child Health Centre, St. John's, Newfoundland A1A 1R8, Canada.

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