Immunometabolism of infections

Physiological studies of infection biology revealed decades ago that there is an intimate relationship between the immune system and the host metabolic system. These interactions begin soon after pathogen detection and continue to evolve over the course of the infection. A relatively recent resurgence in interest in the interface between immunity and metabolism gave rise to the field of ‘immunometabolism’, a term that was coined in 2011. Immunometabolic studies have mainly focused on the cellular level and on non-infectious diseases such as metabolic syndrome, with surprisingly few studies involving infections. In 2019, several studies started to elucidate the relationship between metabolism and the immune response to infectious diseases on both the cellular and the organismal levels. Moreover, 2019 saw the re-emergence of invertebrate animal models to study immunometabolism and infection. Several studies in 2019 have provided exciting insights into the relationship between the immune response to infection and the host metabolic system.