Skipping breakfast may compromise immune system: Study

WASHINGTON: According to a recent study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, fasting may make it harder to fight against infections and raise your chance of developing heart disease.

The study, which concentrated on mouse models, is one of the first to demonstrate that skipping meals causes the brain to react in a way that harms immune cells.

The findings, which centre on breakfast, were released in the Immunity journal and may help researchers better understand how long-term fasting may influence the body.

"There is a growing awareness that fasting is healthy, and there is indeed abundant evidence for the benefits of fasting. Our study provides a word of caution as it suggests that there may also be a cost to fasting that carries a health risk," said lead author Filip Swirski, PhD, Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai, adding, "This is a mechanistic study delving into some of the fundamental biology relevant to fasting. The study shows that there is a conversation between the nervous and immune systems."

Researchers aimed to better understand how fasting -- from a relatively short fast of only a few hours to a more severe fast of 24 hours -- affects the immune system.

They analyzed two groups of mice. One group ate breakfast right after waking up (breakfast is their largest meal of the day), and the other group had no breakfast.

Researchers collected blood samples in both groups when mice woke up (baseline), then four hours later, and eight hours later. When examining the blood work, researchers noticed a distinct difference in the fasting group.

Specifically, the researchers saw a difference in the number of monocytes, which are white blood cells that are made in the bone marrow and travel through the body, where they play many critical roles, from fighting infections to heart disease, to cancer.

At baseline, all mice had the same amount of monocytes. But after four hours, monocytes in mice from the fasting group were dramatically affected.

Researchers found 90 per cent of these cells disappeared from the bloodstream, and the number further declined at eight hours. Meanwhile, monocytes in the non-fasting group were unaffected.

In fasting mice, researchers discovered the monocytes travelled back to the bone marrow to hibernate.

Concurrently, the production of new cells in the bone marrow diminished. The monocytes in the bone marrow -- which typically have a short lifespan -- significantly changed.

They survived longer as a consequence of staying in the bone marrow and aged differently than the monocytes that stayed in the blood.

The researchers continued to fast mice for up to 24 hours and then reintroduced food.

The cells hiding in the bone marrow surged back into the bloodstream within a few hours.

This surge led to a heightened level of inflammation. Instead of protecting against infection, these altered monocytes were more inflammatory, making the body less resistant to fighting infection.

This study is among the first to make the connection between the brain and these immune cells during fasting. Researchers found that specific regions in the brain controlled the monocyte response during fasting.

This study demonstrated that fasting elicits a stress response in the brain -- that's what makes people "hangry" (feeling hungry and angry) -- and this instantly triggers a large-scale migration of these white blood cells from the blood to the bone marrow, and then back to the bloodstream shortly after a food is reintroduced.

Dr Swirski emphasized that while there is also evidence of the metabolic benefits of fasting, this new study is a useful advance in the full understanding of the body's mechanisms.

"The study shows that, on the one hand, fasting reduces the number of circulating monocytes, which one might think is a good thing, as these cells are important components of inflammation. On the other hand, the reintroduction of food creates a surge of monocytes flooding back into the blood, which can be problematic. Fasting, therefore regulates this pool in ways that are not always beneficial to the body's capacity to respond to a challenge such as an infection," said Dr. Swirski, adding, "Because these cells are so important to other diseases like heart disease or cancer, understanding how their function is controlled is critical."