Day 3: Aronia contributions to prevention of bacterial infection
Day 2 of 12 Days of Tohi was about us sharing how aronia fruit can potentially help us fight off viral infections (e.g., COVID-19, influenza) and today in Day 3, we share some data that aronia can also help our immune system defense against bacterial infection.
from CDC website https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/index.html
“Listeriosis is a serious infection usually caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. An estimated 1,600 people get listeriosis each year, and about 260 die. The infection is most likely to sicken pregnant women and their newborns, adults aged 65 or older, and people with weakened immune systems… listeriosis ranks third in total number of deaths among foodborne bacterial pathogens, with fatality rates exceeding even Salmonella spp. and Clostridium botulinum.”
In this study, (click image to link to publisher site) scientists identified that aronia pretreatment helped reduce the severity of listeria infection through increased numbers of CD11b+ macrophages, CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, activated CD86+macrophages (CD11b+), dendritic cells (CD11c+), and levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase and IL-6. (Immunomodulatory activity and protective effects of chokeberry fruit extract on Listeria monocytogenes infection in mice, Dragica Gajić et al., https://doi.org/10.1039/D0FO00946F)
These kinds of changes indicate to us that aronia treatment (vs. control) increased the number of our activated immune cells responsible for recognizing, killing, and destroying L. monocytogenes bacteria in multiple different tissues in the body (e.g., gut, spleen).
Keiona Khen, B.S., Master’s Student and Tohi Graduate Rsearch Fellow
Keiona comes to us from a Nutritional Sciences background and will pursue a career in sports nutrition using her diverse and interdisciplinary backgrounds in nutrition, exercise science, comparative physiology, immunology, and nanotechnology.
Keiona’s early experiments investigating the effects of aronia pretreatment on C. elegans infected with Listeria monocytogenes shows that the aronia pretreatment (compared to controls):
may improve survival after infection
improve worm health to support normal growth and reproduction even during active listeria infection
Her continued work on her master’s thesis is examining how this occurs through transcriptomic analysis of worms during infection with and without aronia pretreatment. Come back for her master’s thesis defense in May 2021!
