The flux of energy in critical illness and the obesity paradox

During critical illness, systemic inflammation causes organ-specific metabolic changes. In the immune and inflammatory compartments, predominantly anabolic reprogramming supports cellular replication and inflammatory response execution. Pari passu, catabolism of adipose tissue and skeletal muscle supplies carbon skeletons and enthalpy for inflammatory and immune cell anabolism. The liver plays a key role during these metabolic shifts in enabling adequate supply of glucose and ketone bodies to the circulation. Although often perceived as passive surrogates of prehospitalization frailty, body mass constituents are active parties of an overarching metabolic trade-off that is key for survival after acute insults. Muscle and adipose tissue remodel in response to critical illness and thus profoundly influence the systemic metabolic landscape during and after hospitalization. Whether obesity’s effect on patient systemic metabolism and survival is paradoxically beneficial or not remains controversial. Substrate-induced epigenetic changes lead to abnormal transcriptional programs that in turn regulate metabolic pathways critical to patient survival. We present a summary of major mechanisms involved in the flux of energy in critical illness from body mass into immune response execution and suggest future research avenues focused on perturbed immune-metabolic and epigenetic programs that could lead to improved understanding of these processes, and eventually to better outcomes for the critically ill.