Resistance to infections inducing two types of immune response, humoral and cell-mediated, has been measured in mice after Salmonella typhimurium and Klebsiella pneumoniae inoculation; the animals exhibited different kinds of obesity: genetic, ob/ob and db/db mutants, induced by fat diet or gold thioglucose (aurothioglucose) injection (determining obesity of central origin). Klebsiella infection was aggravated in all types of obesity. Salmonella infection was aggravated in genetically diabetic and dietary-obese mice. The two kinds of genetically obese mice show an important functional decrease in splenic lymphocytes. In contrast, aurothioglucose-obese mice were more resistant than controls.
Mild protein-calorie deprivation in mice decreases their early nonspecific inflammatory response to an injection of BCG or tuberculin into the footpad. After an injection of BCG, the size of the granuloma and the delayed hypersensitivity reaction to tuberculin significantly decreased. This decrease in cell-mediated immunity was paradoxically accompanied by a fall in bacillus multiplication at the popliteal ganglion, i.e. the site of BCG injection. A reduction in microbial multiplication was also observed in the spleen after intraperitoneal injection of Listeria and in the liver after intravenous injection.
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