Understanding the Influence of Nutrition in Modulating Autoimmune Disease

Nutrition plays a vitally significant role in health. Food constituents or their metabolites are the important sources that direct the immune system outcomes. They can directly or indirectly shift the immune response toward the anti/pro-inflammatory direction. Food supplements or nutrients such as fatty acids, spices, probiotics, polysaccharides, vitamins, minerals, protein, peptides, amino acids, etc. have been investigated for their role in various diseases including autoimmune diseases. These dietary components can serve as immune nutrients to target/prevent or modulate the immune disease. Dietary nutrients (micronutrients or macronutrients) can influence both innate immune defenses such as epithelial barrier integrity, peptides, and pro/anti-inflammatory cytokines as well as adaptive immune cell functionality. Plant or animal-based nutrients have been shown to possess anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that can act as protective agents against autoimmunity. Polyphenols such as flavonoids and isoflavones and fatty acids such as omega 3 fatty acids have been widely investigated for immune modulation of autoimmunity. There are recent studies that suggest that by manipulating diet or nutrients, disease outcomes can be changed. Some food constituents can function as immunomodulators or immunosuppressors and may be able to affect autoimmune diseases. Nutritional preparations can be adapted for clinical use to treat autoimmune diseases and patients with abrupt immune function as an approachable treatment. Such preparations can contain specific amino acids, protein, nucleotides, and specific polyunsaturated fatty acids such as ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. This can emerge as one of the focused areas to treat autoimmune diseases. The underlying mechanism and signaling pathways of these food components and their metabolites and nutrients have not been fully explored and need to be investigated.

This Research Topic will explore the diet metabolites or nutrient-associated underlying mechanisms/pathways to address the influence of nutrition on autoimmunity. Also, this topic welcomes research related to the applications of dietary modulation as a therapeutic approach for autoimmune diseases.

In this research topic, we welcome in vitro, in vivo, ex vivo, human studies, and research articles to submit in the proposed research area.
This research topic will cover (not limited to) the following topics:
1) Effects of nutrients on immune cells and autoimmunity.
2) Underlying mechanism or pathway of food constituents or their metabolites on autoimmune disease.
3) Food supplementation or metabolite as an effector agent to target autoimmune disease.
4) Dietary immunomodulation and autoimmunity.
5) Nutrient’s role in preventing autoimmunity diseases.
6) Role of microbiota and their metabolites on autoimmune diseases.