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Nutritional Deficiency Of Vitamin And Its Effects On The Normal Development And Key Functions Of Immune Cells

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Nutritional deficiency of Zn in humans is associated with major disease conditions like growth retardation, cell-mediated immune dysfunction, cognitive impairment and increased susceptibility to infection. Zn modulates various aspects of the immune system. Many in vivo studies have shown the impact of Zn deficiency and supplementation on the normal development and key functions of immune cells. Dietary Zn deficiency is known to influence the onset of autoimmune diseases and also prolongs disease severity 35. A study showed that Zn suppresses Th17 mediated rheumatoid arthritis by inhibiting Th17 cell development 36. Furthermore, Zn supplementation therapy partially restores these immune deficiencies. Higher Zn intake is associated with improved resistance to infection and reduced duration of illness and improvements in specific lymphocyte subpopulation numbers for example T regs, Th1 and Th2 cells 37. In this study we show that zinc supplementation induced a tolerogenic phenotype in DCs both in vitro and in vivo and promoted the development of regulatory T cells and affected the Treg-Th17 balance favourably to induce tolerance. DCs are major mediators of proinflammmatory and anti-inflammatory (tolerogenic) responses 12. Tolerogenic DCs function by causing effector T cell deletion, anergy and induction of regulatory T cells 17. Tolerogenic DCs are induced by a variety of environmental factors such as the presence of immunosuppressive drugs, nutritional factors,

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