Metabolic shift induced by systemic activation of T cells in PD-1-deficient mice perturbs brain monoamines & emotional behavior

Metabolic shift induced by systemic activation of T cells in PD-1-deficient mice perturbs brain monoamines & emotional behavior Miyajima, M., et al.
Nature Immunology 18, 1342–1352 (2017)
doi:10.1038/ni.386

https://www.nature.com/articles/ni.3867

From the abstract:

Okay, its mouse science. And these were genetically modified mice, and you can't ever be really sure whether the genetic modification is entirely selective to the thing you think it is (the excessive T cell activation). But kind of interesting nonetheless.

 

I doubt the result has anything particular to do with T cells. It shows that a large number of unregulated cells - most typically seen in cancer - eat up nutrients. People have observed cancer patients becoming cachectic for centuries. Many of these engineered mice have huge numbers of the unregulated cells. The MRL/lpr mouse has lymph nodes the size of cashew nuts, which scaled up to human size would weigh many kilograms.