A study by the National Institutes of Health found that adopting a vegan or ketogenic diet leads to significant changes in the immune system, with the vegan diet improving innate immunity and the keto diet improving immunity adaptive. Both diets also caused metabolic changes and altered the gut microbiome.
The NIH study found that specific immune responses occur rapidly when diets change, more research is needed to determine health effects.
Researchers at the
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”}]” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>amino acids and a reduction in microbial pathways for these processes – which may reflect the higher amounts of protein consumed by people on this diet.
The distinct metabolic and immune system changes induced by the two diets were observed despite the diversity of participants, indicating that dietary changes consistently affect widespread and interconnected pathways in the body. Further studies are needed to examine the impact of these nutritional interventions on specific components of the immune system. According to the authors, the results of this study show that the immune system responds surprisingly quickly to nutritional interventions. The authors suggest that it may be possible to tailor diets to prevent disease or complement disease treatments, such as slowing processes related to cancer or neurodegenerative disorders.
Reference: “Differential peripheral immune signatures elicited by vegan versus ketogenic diets in humans” by Verena M. Link, Poorani Subramanian, Foo Cheung, Kyu Lee Han, Apollo Stacy, Liang Chi, Brian A. Sellers, Galina Koroleva, Amber B Courville, Shreni Mistry, Andrew Burns, Richard Apps, Kevin D. Hall and Yasmine Belkaid, 30 January 2024, Nature Medicine.
DOI: 10.1038/s41591-023-02761-2
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