NIH study finds distinct immune responses occur quickly when diets change, more research needed to determine health effects.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) observed rapid and distinct immune system changes in a small study of people who switched to a vegan or a ketogenic (also called keto) diet.
Scientists closely monitored various biological responses of people sequentially eating vegan and keto diets for two weeks, in random order. They found that the vegan diet prompted responses linked to innate immunity—the body’s non-specific first line of defense against pathogens—while the keto diet prompted responses associated with adaptive immunity—pathogen-specific immunity built through exposures in daily life and vaccination. Metabolic changes and shifts in the participants’ microbiomes—communities of bacteria living in the gut—were also observed.
More research is needed to determine if these changes are beneficial or detrimental and what effect they could have on nutritional interventions for diseases such as cancer or inflammatory conditions.
Comparative Effects of Vegan and Keto Diets
Scientific understanding of how different diets impact the human immune system and microbiome is limited. Therapeutic nutritional interventions—which involve changing the diet to improve health—are not well understood, and few studies have directly compared the effects of more than one diet. The keto diet is a low-carbohydrate diet that is generally high in fat. The vegan diet eliminates animal products and tends to be high in fiber and low in fat.
The study was conducted by researchers from the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) at the Metabolic Clinical Research Unit in the NIH Clinical Center. The 20 participants were diverse with…