Guest guest Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 That's interesting, never heard of it. Sounds like it activates an innate immune receptor called dectin-1, which I also never heard of before: Brown, G. D. & Gordon, S. Immune recognition. A new receptor for beta- glucans. Nature 413, 36–37 (2001) I was reading about these beta-glucans at this page (apparantly sponsored by vendors of beta-glucans): http://www.betaglucan.org/ In terms of bioavailability, that page focuses a lot on the particle size, but doesn't really say what size the molecules are. So I'm wondering how they are supposed to get absorbed. The above site mentions Peyer's patches, which leads me to think they are talking about this stuff being taken up by the M cells of the gut surface... something I have been meaning to learn about. This rather summary, but university-associated website suggests that *only* monosaccharides (not even disaccharides) can be absorbed into the villous epithelial cells, the most abundant cells of the gut wall. I guess I will assume that is true (at least until I learn about some kinda vexatious exception). http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/smallgut/absor b_sugars.html M cells on the other hand, can phagocytose anything they want (as long as it's micron-ish in size), and do so, and deliver the stuff to immune cells that wait in the Peyer's patch to see what the M cells will come up with. Since we seem to be talking about a big string of sugar molecules here, it seems it's the M-cell-mediated uptake that is relevant (at least in a healthy gut; an unhealthy one might have increased general permeability). This paper is pretty interesting. It claims that the stuff is absorbed systemically from the gut (I guess when M cells deliver their samples to the Peyer's patch, some of the payload gets loose?). I didn't study it, but it reviews some previous studies and then goes on to offer 1 mg of the stuff orally to some mice, and a 2x increase in IL-12 was apparantly mentioned (IL-12 is the prime Th1-directing cytokine). They also showed increased survival (statistically significant) after a heavy S. aureus or C. albicans challenge. http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/cgi/reprint/314/3/1079.pdf This is pretty interesting stuff. Perhaps it could embolden your Th1 response. That could do things like increase your production of oxidants, possibly helping to kill any intracellular persisting pathogens you might have... while possibly also increasing the stress responses which might make them more abx-tolerant. I don't know. I tend to hypothesize that (in the average case) they are already running their stress responses pretty hard, in which case throwing more immune system stuff like oxidants at them might be worth it. But it's sort of like, I might have hypothesized the exact opposite if I had just drank a pepsi instead of a coke. If you don't have any pathogens, just autoimmunity, I would not think this would be likely to be a great thing to take. Basically just going to stir up immunity, which is not what you'd want in an autoimmune scenario. If you have mostly autoimmunity, but it's pathogens that are a necessary factor for some/all of the autoimmunity to persist... and/or you have pointless hyperimmunity to a harmless, common infection (both basically hypothetical possibilities)... then you get a mixed bag. Another big question is, what safety data are there on this. Perhaps that has never been studied in man, particularly sick people? You could kind of wonder, is this going to affect the permability of the gut? Will it behave the same, if your gut is already abnormally permeable, as it does in a normal subject? Is there any chance it could (infrequently/rarely) lead to some kind of untoward immune response? As for the possible contribution to yeast biofilms and to their various properties... whew, I really don't know. Definitely post if you find out more about it. I'll post more about it if I read more, but I haven't been feeling too great lately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 <usenethod@...> wrote: I'll post more about it if I read more, but I haven't been feeling too great lately. Sorry to hear that . Wondered where you'd been. What's going on health wise? penny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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