"Feed a Fever, Starve a Cold"

The titular saying is often thrown around by my grandparents, but as the Economist article states, it probably isn’t a good practice to refuse sick people their food. However, some studies in mice done by a Dr. Medzhitov aimed to see if this aphorism had any truth to it. Mice were infected with a murine influenza virus or listeria bacteria and fed glucose or saline to see how well the mice fared when provided different food. Those infected with a virus tended to survive if they were given glucose, whereas the bacterial infection killed almost all of the mice that were fed glucose. These results are hard to generalize to humans and may represent a limited perspective of a larger clinical picture. However, key to any attempt to extend these findings was that observation that in bacterial infections, cells show a propensity for burning fat reserves rather than glucose. In further experiments, the mice with bacterial infection were given a form of glucose that they couldn’t metabolize and experienced similar survival rates to the mice with the same infection who were fed saline. Ultimately, the chemical analyses of the two cellular environments showed that a deluge of glucose in bacterial infections led to the production of oxidative free radicals, making the course of disease longer and more fatal. Yet, more glucose assisted in the function of the immune system (an energy intensive system, at that) during viral infection and led to decreased rates of apoptosis. A lot of further work needs to be done, but until then, it is fun to think about what other random sayings may have some truth to them.

-Andrew

Source:

https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21707186-old-wives-tale-gets-some-support-medical-science-feed-virus-starve