Leafy greens, widely recognised as containing essential ingredients for ensuring optimum health and wellbeing, have been shown to influence our intestinal health by delivering a protective factor to certain cells of the immune system.
These findings, reported today online in the journal Cell, have implications for better understanding the basis of intestinal inflammatory disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and may offer new opportunities for therapeutic intervention.
The collaboration between UK-based researchers at the Babraham Institute, which receives strategic funding from the BBSRC, and the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research provides new insight into how one chemical component found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, governs the survival of a special type of white blood cell, part of the body's front line defence against infections and important in wound repair.
The cells in question, known as intra-epithelial lymphocytes (IELs), exist as a network just beneath the epithelial cells that form the barrier along the body's surfaces. They play a critical role in monitoring the large number of micro-organisms present in the intestine, keeping infections at bay and maintaining a healthy gut. The research shows for the first time that mice fed a diet low in vegetables rapidly lose these specialised immune cells (IELs) lining the intestinal tract, but not other immune cells.