Another Face of Salt

• Although salt has often been linked to different health disorders, researchers at India’s Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI) in Faridabad have shown that a diet high in salt is able to suppress tumor progression in mice.

• Many of the health disorders above are associated with the strong inflammatory response elicited by salt. The researchers have harnessed this very property of salt to fight against tumors.

• Since high salt had recently been shown to activate the immune response, researchers reasoned that a high-salt diet (HSD), when given to tumor-bearing mice, may be helpful in promoting tumor immunity.

• A study showed that HSD was able to suppress the tumor progression through the activation of immune cells called natural killer cells.

• One of the striking findings of the study was that HSD made the gut barrier leaky, resulting in translocation of Bifidobacteria (one of the major genera of bacteria that make up the gastrointestinal tract) from the gut to the tumor sites.

• Once inside the tumors, these bacteria were found to “cross-talk” with the suppressed NK cells, allowing them to improve their antitumor attack. The researchers found that Bifidobacteria increased in abundance in mice fed a high-salt diet.

• When salt was combined with a low dose of one of the most effective cancer drugs, anti-PD1 immunotherapy, the two acted synergistically and dramatically regressed the tumor growth, the report says. The researchers conclude that “HSD causes increased immune activation, which leads to tumor-killing through Bifidobacterium and NK cell cross-talk”.

15 September 2021

source:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-021-00034-w

https://doi.org/10.1038/d44151-021-00034-w