ABOVE: Illustration of fat cells
© ISTOCK.COM, UGREEN
Towards the final stages of diseases such as cancer and kidney disease, many patients develop cachexia, a devastating condition in which muscle mass and fat reserves waste away, leading to uncontrollable weight loss and sometimes death. Cachexia can also surface during infections, for instance, by HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and other parasites. The condition can’t be cured by getting patients to eat or by giving them nutritional supplementation, pushing scientists to better understand its underlying causes.
Now, researchers have identified a mechanism by which viral infection can lead to cachexia. In mice infected by a particular virus, killer T cells trigger the wasting of fat tissue and body weight, although how they do so is still unclear. The findings were published on Monday (May 20) in Nature Immunology.
“Currently, we don’t have a therapy in cachexia,” notes Denis Guttridge, a cancer biologist at the ...
