A high-salt diet may induce effective tumor immunity-I

A high-salt diet is defined as consuming more than 6 grams of salt per day. We've always believed that this diet is more dangerous than beneficial, so we strive to eat as little salt as possible on a regular basis. A high-salt diet has also been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, and brain hemorrhage in previous research, and it can also increase the risk of stomach ulcers and stomach cancer, as well as damage the immune system's ability to fight bacteria, among other things.

However, a recent study has overturned our previous perceptions of high salt diets. A high-salt diet, according to this study, facilitates the interaction between NK cells and the gut microbiota to produce efficient tumor immunity and, as a result, suppress tumor growth. The research was carried out by a team of researchers from the Translational Health Sciences and Technology Institute, and the relevant research results were published on Science Advances under the title "High-salt diet mediates interplay between NK cells and gutmicrobiota to induce potent tumor immunity".

Researchers created a tumor mouse model and set up a comparison experiment in which tumor-bearing mice were fed three different levels of dietary salt: a normal diet, a low-salt diet, and a high-salt diet to see if a high-salt diet could limit tumor growth. The mice on the high-salt diet had significantly smaller tumors and tumor growth was slowed. The researchers then examined the presence of organ damage in tumor-bearing mice fed the high-salt diet, concluding that the diet was well tolerated and had no major organ adverse effects. They also looked at the preventive effect of a high-salt diet on various malignancies and discovered that after feeding the high-salt diet, all tumors were inhibited. As a result of the experiments, it was shown that a high-salt diet provided great tumor immunity while having no physiological negative effects.

The researchers conducted additional research to better understand how a high-salt diet develops tumor immunity. They looked at tumor-infiltrating immune cells, lymph node draining cells, and spleen cells. According to the findings, NK cell frequency and its activation marker CD107a were both up-regulated by 50% in tumor mice fed with a high-salt diet compared to normal and low-salt diets.

The researchers implanted melanoma cells B16 into mice knocked out of the recombination activation gene 1 (RAG1-/-) to validate that the tumor immunity caused by the high-salt diet is independent of adaptive immunity (B cells, CD4, and CD8 cells). Because these mice lack mature T and B cells, they have no effect on NK cells. The tumor volume and mass of tumor mice fed a high-salt diet were reduced compared to those fed a normal diet, according to the findings. This demonstrates the importance of NK cells in tumor immunity produced by a high-salt diet.

To learn more about its function, the researchers employed the mouse NK1.1 antibody to deplete NK cells in tumor mice, then measured tumor volume and mass to see if the NK cell reduction weakened the inhibitory effect of a high-salt diet on tumors. The above results showed that NK cells are involved in tumor immunity produced by a high-salt diet.

A fan of biotechnology who likes to post articles in relevant fields regularly