Inflammatory responses and obesity: Nutrition as an epigenetic modulator

Abstract

The onset of inflammation takes place in a human body due to an injury or infection during which the tissue becomes inflamed/reddened, swollen, hot, and painful. Basically, it is a collection of host defenses that occurs during an injury and infection in which the white blood cells protect the body from infection from bacteria, fungi, parasites, or viruses. Innate immunity provides the first challenging defense against the diverse foreign harmful invaders, while adaptive immunity, also known as acquired immunity, utilizes specialized immune cells and antibodies, which provide a counterattack and destroy these diverse foreign invaders. Moreover, they can prevent infections/diseases in the future by recognizing those invaders and providing a new immune response. However, when an immune system responds too aggressively to an infection, a condition termed a cytokine storm takes place, which may lead to multi-organ failure and even death. Inflammatory response in advancing age and obesity is intricately associated. Obesity has been identified as a low-grade systemic inflammatory response. Particularly, elevated levels of serum C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, and leptin, well characterized biomarkers of inflammation, are observed predominantly in obese individuals.