{"id":3154,"date":"2026-11-15T10:41:25","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T15:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/?p=3154"},"modified":"2026-11-15T10:41:25","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T15:41:25","slug":"even-a-brief-exposure-to-high-fat-diet-is-inflammatory-low-fat-diet-is-not-diet-not-bmi-drives-pathology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/?p=3154","title":{"rendered":"Even a brief exposure to high-fat diet is inflammatory, low-fat diet is not; diet, not BMI, drives pathology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A study that is bound to further exacerbate the &#8220;controversy&#8221; of high-fat diets (HFD) vs. low-fat diets (LFD) and their role in chronic inflammatory diseases (in this case psoriasis and lung inflammation). Yet, the study findings are unequivocal. Namely, even a brief (4-day) exposure dramatically exacerbated the inflammatory response to a skin irritant and imprinted some sort of &#8220;cell memory&#8221; so that when the subjects were primed again with a skin irritant, the inflammatory response was much worse compared to subjects kept on a low-fat diet, even when the challenge was initiated long after the initial exposure to the HFD. Interestingly, it was the diet, not how obese the subjects were at the time of challenge and re-challenge, that determined the severity of the inflammatory response. Feeding the subjects increased levels of glucose did NOT induce the inflammatory response nor did it imprint the inflammatory &#8220;memory&#8221; to be reactivated at subsequent inflammatory challenge. This study may explain why many people who are of normal weight or even skinny, often develop chronic inflammatory conditions, while others, who are obese, remain symptom-free despite their elevated BMI. It is all about the diet, we truly are what we eat. And last, but not least, the study tested whether weight loss drugs of the GLP-1 agonist category (Ozempic Wegovy, Mounjaro, etc) could prevent the inflammatory response. They did not, which is yet another indication that those drugs are little more than a symptomatic treatment, with no long term benefit for the underlying issue, which once again has been found to be inflammation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4\">https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"Sec2\" class=\"c-article-section__title js-section-title js-c-reading-companion-sections-item\">Diet, not body mass, dictates disease<\/h2>\n<div id=\"Sec2-content\" class=\"c-article-section__content\">To distinguish the impact of diet itself from the consequences of established obesity, we used topical imiquimod (IMQ) challenge as a synchronized model of acute type 17 skin inflammation in which age-matched mice were fed either a short-term (1\u2009week) or long-term (10\u2009weeks) <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>HFD (60% kcal from fat)<\/strong><\/span>, or a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>low-fat (control) diet (LFD; 10% kcal from fat)<\/strong><\/span>, before topical IMQ challenge<sup><a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e1204\" title=\"Fits, L. vander et al. Imiquimod-induced psoriasis-like skin inflammation in mice is mediated via the IL-23\/IL-17 axis. J. Immunol. 182, 5836\u20135845 (2009).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR22\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 22\">22<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0(Fig.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#Fig1\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"figure anchor\">1a<\/a>). Mice remained on their assigned diets throughout\u00a0IMQ challenge.\u00a0Measurements of serum cytokine levels before application of IMQ did not reveal significant differences between the three groups (Extended Data Fig.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#Fig5\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"figure anchor\">1a<\/a>), although we did observe modestly increased numbers of T<sub>H<\/sub>17 cells and \u03b3\u03b4 T cells in the skin of mice fed a short- and long-term HFD, relative to the mice fed LFD (Extended Data Fig.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#Fig5\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"figure anchor\">1b\u2013d<\/a>). <span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Both short- and long-term HFD also reduced glucose tolerance, although these effects were more pronounced in obese mice that were fed a long-term HFD<\/strong><\/span> (Extended Data Fig.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#Fig6\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"figure anchor\">2a,b<\/a>).<\/div>\n<p>&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Transient exposure to HFD during a narrowly defined peri-initiation window durably reshapes tissue immunity <span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">without requiring obesity<\/span><\/strong><\/span>. The consequence is not merely heightened acute pathology but a lasting change in local immune responsiveness that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>becomes evident months later after rechallenge, after return to LFD<\/strong><\/span>. These experiments identify dietary state, rather than accumulated adiposity, as the proximate determinant of disease amplification. Three compositionally distinct fat-enriched diets\u2014HFD, MFD and WD\u2014each amplified IMQ-induced type 17 skin inflammation, whereas <span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><strong>glucose water alone did not<\/strong><\/span>. Conversely, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>transiently switching persistently obese mice from HFD to LFD during a corresponding four-day peri-initiation window attenuated disease<\/strong><\/span>. Semaglutide further sharpened this dissociation: GLP-1 receptor agonism improved glucose handling, reduced body weight and adiposity, and lowered circulating insulin and leptin, but did not attenuate HFD-amplified inflammatory responses. Although longer-term treatment with GLP-1 receptor agonists and related incretin-based therapies may improve established psoriasis in patients with obesity or type 2 diabetes<sup><a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3376\" title=\"Ciancio, G. et al. Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis: emerging evidence and future research opportunities. Front. Immunol. 17, 1744308 (2026).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR44\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\">44<\/a>,<a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3376_1\" title=\"Lebwohl, M. et al. Ixekizumab with or without tirzepatide in adults with psoriasis and overweight or obesity. JAMA Dermatol. 162, 709\u2013719 (2026).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR45\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\">45<\/a>,<a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3376_2\" title=\"Buonanno, S. et al. The potential role of GLP-1 receptor agonists in the management of psoriatic disease: a scoping review. Inflamm. Res. 74, 167 (2025).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR46\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\">46<\/a>,<a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3379\" title=\"Petkovi\u0107-Dabi\u0107, J. et al. Effects of semaglutide treatment on psoriatic lesions in obese patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: an open-label, randomized clinical trial. Biomolecules 15, 46 (2025).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR47\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 47\">47<\/a><\/sup>, our experiment addressed the distinct question of whether short-term <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>semaglutide treatment<\/strong><\/span> blocks the additional amplification imposed by coincident HFD exposure. It <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>did not<\/strong><\/span>, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>indicating that systemic metabolic improvement and diet-primed inflammatory susceptibility are separable<\/strong><\/span>. Whereas prolonged high-fat or Western-style feeding has previously been shown to exacerbate IMQ-induced and IL-23-driven inflammation<sup><a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3383\" title=\"Higashi, Y. et al. High-fat diet exacerbates imiquimod-induced psoriasis-like dermatitis in mice. Exp. Dermatol. 27, 178\u2013184 (2018).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR48\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\">48<\/a>,<a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3383_1\" title=\"Nakamizo, S. et al. High fat diet exacerbates murine psoriatic dermatitis by increasing the number of IL-17-producing \u03b3\u03b4 T cells. Sci. Rep. 7, 14076 (2017).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR49\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\">49<\/a>,<a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3386\" title=\"Shi, Z. et al. Short-term western diet intake promotes IL-23-mediated skin and joint inflammation accompanied by changes to the gut microbiota in mice. J. Invest. Dermatol. 141, 1780\u20131791 (2021).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR50\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 50\">50<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0and, with sustained exposure, promote spontaneous dermatitis<sup><a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3390\" title=\"Shi, Z. et al. Short-term exposure to a western diet induces psoriasiform dermatitis by promoting accumulation of IL-17A-producing \u03b3\u03b4 T cells. J. Invest. Dermatol. 140, 1815\u20131823 (2020).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR23\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 23\">23<\/a>,<a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3393\" title=\"Zhang, Y. et al. Epidermal fatty acid binding protein promotes skin inflammation induced by high-fat diet. Immunity 42, 953\u2013964 (2015).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR24\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 24\">24<\/a><\/sup>, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>as little as 4\u2009days at inflammatory onset was sufficient here<\/strong><\/span>. HFD alone did not confer durable susceptibility to a later inflammatory challenge, indicating that dietary exposure must intersect with tissue inflammation to imprint the long-term phenotype. Our findings may also help explain a previous observation that leptin-deficient\u00a0<i>ob\/ob<\/i>\u00a0mice did not exhibit increased IMQ susceptibility despite profound adiposity<sup><a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3400\" title=\"Nakamizo, S. et al. High fat diet exacerbates murine psoriatic dermatitis by increasing the number of IL-17-producing \u03b3\u03b4 T cells. Sci. Rep. 7, 14076 (2017).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR49\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 49\">49<\/a><\/sup>. As leptin supports optimal T<sub>H<\/sub>17 differentiation<sup><a id=\"ref-link-section-d179406174e3407\" title=\"Gerriets, V. A. et al. Leptin directly promotes T-cell glycolytic metabolism to drive effector T-cell differentiation in a mouse model of autoimmunity. Eur. J. Immunol. 46, 1970\u20131983 (2016).\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#ref-CR51\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 51\">51<\/a><\/sup>, its absence may limit engagement of the IL-1\u03b2\u2013T<sub>H<\/sub>17 axis. Consistent with this possibility, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>transient peri-initiation HFD amplified IMQ-induced inflammation in WT but not\u00a0<i>ob\/ob<\/i>\u00a0mice<\/strong><\/span> (Extended Data Fig.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4#Fig6\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"figure anchor\">2o<\/a>).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologynetworks.com\/applied-sciences\/news\/could-a-few-bad-dietary-choices-worsen-your-next-immune-response-417860\">https:\/\/www.technologynetworks.com\/applied-sciences\/news\/could-a-few-bad-dietary-choices-worsen-your-next-immune-response-417860<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;Scientists have long known that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>diet shapes the immune system<\/strong><\/span>. Now, a UC San Francisco team has found that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>even a brief dietary change can substantially change how the body responds to skin irritation<\/strong><\/span>, at least in mice. When scientists fed mice <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">a high-fat diet for just a few days<\/span>, the mice had <span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">a much worse reaction to an irritating cream<\/span>. And the skin stayed on alert even after the mice returned to a low-fat diet and inflammation cleared, responding more strongly the next time it was exposed to the cream.<\/span> <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The findings suggest that <span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">short-term diet may have just as much effect as body weight when it comes to inflammation<\/span><\/span><\/strong>. \u201cLong-term dietary habits absolutely matter for health, but our study unearthed a much more real-time influence of diet,\u201d said\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/profiles.ucsf.edu\/sagar.bapat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sagar Bapat<\/a>, MD, PhD, professor of pathology at UCSF and corresponding author of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11181-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the paper, which appears in\u00a0<em>Nature<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on Oct. 28. \u201c<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Breakfast, lunch, dinner \u2014 they all can have a tremendous and rapid impact on the immune system<\/strong><\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;\u201cFor many years, we\u2019ve known that obesity is tied to more severe inflammation. But we wanted to know whether it was <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>the extra weight or simply the bad diet that was driving the stronger response<\/strong><\/span>,\u201d Jiang said. So, the team tested whether <span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><strong>just four days on high-fat food was enough to trigger an over-active immune response<\/strong><\/span>. They switched mice that had been raised on low-fat food to high-fat food, and dabbed one ear with imiquimod three days later. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>The normal-weight mice developed severe ear inflammation just like the obese mice<\/strong><\/span>. Likewise, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>obese mice that had been switched to normal food for four days experienced much milder inflammation<\/strong><\/span>. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Weeks later, after the normal-weight mice had returned to a low-fat diet and their inflammation had subsided, they got a second dose of imiquimod in the same ear that had flared before \u2014 and it triggered an outsized response<\/strong><\/span>. Jiang and Bapat found that high-fat food drew rapid-response immune cells into the skin, where they amplified the reaction to imiquimod. As the inflammation subsided, other immune cells, called memory T cells remained in the affected ear. Together, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><strong>these changes left the tissue primed for the next time<\/strong><\/span>. The team found a similar kind of <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>heightened inflammation in response to irritation in the lungs after just a few days of eating a high-fat diet<\/strong><\/span>. \u201cThe diet of a laboratory mouse doesn\u2019t map neatly onto what we eat, but <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>it\u2019s striking how quickly the immune system responds to what\u2019s happening in the body right now<\/strong><\/span>,\u201d said Jiang. \u201cDiet, exercise, sleep \u2014 they could all shape immune health in ways we don\u2019t yet appreciate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study that is bound to further exacerbate the &#8220;controversy&#8221; of high-fat diets (HFD) vs. low-fat diets&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[285,542,361,12,334,175,319,1652],"class_list":["post-3154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-diabetes","tag-glucose","tag-high-fat","tag-inflammation","tag-insulin","tag-low-fat","tag-obesity","tag-psoriasis","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haidut.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}