Brennan, Kiva and O'Leary, Bobby D. and McLaughlin, Danielle and Kinlen, David and Molloy, Eleanor J. and Cody, Declan and Paran, Sri and McAuliffe, Fionnuala M. and Hogan, Andrew and Doyle, Sarah L. (2019) Nucleic acid cytokine responses in obese children and infants of obese mothers. Cytokine. pp. 152-158. ISSN 1043-4666

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Abstract

Almost a third of Irish children are now overweight and the country ranks 58th out of 200 countries for its proportion of overweight youths. With the rising obesity epidemic, and the impaired immune responses of this population, it is vital to understand the effects that obesity has on the immune system and to design future therapeutics, adjuvants and vaccines with overweight and obese populations in mind. Many current vaccines use adjuvants that have been found to be less effective at stimulating the immune response in children compared with adults and there is now substantial effort to design paediatric-focused adjuvants. Additionally, vaccine responses have been shown to be less effective in obese populations indicating that this is a particularly vulnerable population. We have recently identified cytosolic nucleic acids (CNAs), as novel candidate adjuvants for childhood vaccines. Here we investigated whether immune responses to these candidate adjuvants were adversely affected in infants born to overweight or obese mothers, and in overweight and obese children. Type I Interferon (IFN) and proinflammatory cytokines such as Tumor Necrosis Factor α (TNFα) are vital for driving innate and adaptive immune responses. We found that childhood obesity conferred no significant adverse effect on CNA-induced Type I IFN responses when compared with lean children. Similarly, Type I IFN responses were intact in the cord blood of babies delivered from overweight and obese mothers, when compared with lean mothers. There was also no significant impact of obesity on CNA-induced TNFα responses in children or from cord blood of infants born to overweight/obese mothers. In all cases, there was a tendency towards decreased production of innate cytokine Type I Interferon and TNFα, however there was no significant negative correlation. Interestingly, high maternal BMI showed weak and moderate positive correlation with IL-12p70 and IFNγ, respectively, in response to CNA stimulation. This study demonstrates that future adjuvants can be tailored for these populations through the use of activators of CNA sensors.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Proinflammatory cytokine; Maternal obesity; Childhood obesity; Cytosolic nucleic acid;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Biology Faculty of Science and Engineering > Research Institutes > Human Health Institute
Item ID:	13970
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cyto.2019.03.015
Depositing User:	Andrew Hogan
Date Deposited:	08 Feb 2021 16:22
Journal or Publication Title:	Cytokine
Publisher:	Elsevier
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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