Infectious diseases continue to be the main cause of morbidity and mortality among infants and young children in less developed countries. Both acute and chronic deficiencies of macro- and micronutrients result in an impairment to a number of components of the immune system. This inter-relationship between nutrition and immunity underlies disease susceptibility. Recent work from our group has also focused on the hypothesis that malnutrition at critical periods of immune development may have long-lasting consequences on functional immunity. Our current programme of research mainly focuses on nutritional interventions to improve current and long-term immune function.
Selected ongoing studies:
- Immunological effects of zinc as an adjunctive therapy for severe pneumonia in Gambian children.
- Interactions between maternal and infant nutritional supplementation and antibody response to vaccination during infancy
| Recent publications: | |
| Collinson AC, N’Gom PT, Moore SE, Morgan G, Prentice AM (2008) Birth weight and environmental influences on blood leucocyte and lymphocyte subpopulations in rural Gambian infants. BMC Immunology 9:18 doi:10.1186/1471-2172-9-18 http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2172-9-18.pdf Moore SE, Jalil F, Ashraf R, Szu SC, Hahn-Zoric M, Prentice AM, Hanson LA (2008) Revaccination does not improve an observed deficit in antibody responses in Pakistani adults born of a lower birth weight. Vaccine; 26: 158-165. Prentice AM, Gershwin ME, Schaible UE, Keusch GT, Victora CG, Gordon JI. New challenges in studying nutrition-disease interactions in the developing world. J Clin Invest. 2008; 118: 1322-9. http://www.jci.org/articles/view/34034/pdf Ghattas H, Wallace DL, Solon JA, Henson SM, Zhang Y, N’Gom PT, Aspinall R, Morgan G, Griffin GE, Prentice AM, Macallan DC (2007) Long-term effects of perinatal nutrition on T lymphocyte kinetics in young Gambian men. Am J Clin Nutr; 85: 480-487. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/85/2/480.pdf Moore SE (2006) Commentary: patterns in mortality governed by the seasons. Int J Epidemiol; 35: 435-437. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/35/2/435.pdf Moore SE, Collinson AC, Fulford AJ, Jalil F, Siegrist CA, Goldblatt D, Hanson LA, Prentice AM (2006) Effect of month of vaccine administration on antibody responses in The Gambia and Pakistan. Trop Med Int Health; 11: 1529-1541. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118598621/PDFSTART Moore SE, Collinson AC, Tamba N’Gom P, Aspinall R, Prentice AM (2006) Early immunological development and mortality from infectious disease in later life. Proc Nutr Soc; 65: 311-318. |
