::.. WCCN 2010 ..::.. Abstracts ..::

15^th World Congress Clinical Nutrition

19^th – 22^nd September 2010 El Sokhna Resort - Egypt

Diet and the Development of Immune Function

R E Kleinman
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA , USA

The gut immune system is the largest immune organ in the human body. It differs from the peripheral immune system in several ways, including the active tolerant response to commensal organisms and dietary antigens. Infancy and early childhood is a period when the gut immune system is rapidly maturing, and thus is an ideal time to examine the interactions between enteric (and peripheral immunity) and specific nutrients in the diet. The hygiene hypothesis of immune development serves as a model for the importance of early environmental influences on later immune responses. Infants supported by parenteral nutrition and infants that are severely malnourished demonstrate signficant deficits in gut immune function and thus serve to reinforce the importance of enteric feeding in the development of a mature, competent immune system. Zinc and vitamin A are examples of dietary nutrients that have been extensively studied for their effects on both innate and adaptive immunity in animal models and in humans. Human milk has also been shown to have an important influence on infant gut and systemic immune development and nutrients in milk, such as oligosaccharides and nucleotides have been the subject of signficant scientific scrutiny for their unique influences on immune development and host resistance to infection. This discussion reviews this area of immune development with particular emphasis on interactions between dietary nutrients and host immune response that enhance our understanding of the function of the gut immune system.

Scientific Sessions Abstracts

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