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Vitamin B5 boosts immune system
A substantial but not absurdly high dose of vitamin B5 makes the immune system more aggressive towards the tuberculosis bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This suggests an animal study that Chinese immunologists from the University of Guangzhou published in Frontiers in Immunology.
Study
The researchers experimented with mice. They put 200 bcteria of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain H37Rv into the lungs of each mouse. Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain H37Rv is a variant of TB bacterium with which scientists have been conducting tests since the beginning of the twentieth century.
The researchers are not very clear about the dosage, but with some guesswork we estimate the human equivalent of the dose used at about 500 to 700 milligrams of vitamin B5 per day. That's not even a very high dose. In each webshop there are supplements with half a gram of vitamin B5 per cap or tab.
Results
When the 4 weeks were over, the researchers found fewer TB-bacilli in the lungs of the mice that had been given vitamin B5 than in the control group. The researchers had given a group of mice the classic TBC antibiotic isoniazid, and this drug worked better than vitamin B5.
How vitamin B5 bothers TB-bacilli became clear when the researchers studied the immune cells in the blood of the mice. Vitamin B5 did not increase the number of immune cells, but caused the CD4-T cells to produce more cytokines such as interleukin 17 and interferon-gamma. In the blood, the researchers found more of these types of interleukins.
How vitamin B5 bothers TB-bacilli became clear when the researchers studied the immune cells in the blood of the mice. Vitamin B5 did not increase the number of immune cells, but caused the CD4-T cells to produce more cytokines such as interleukin 17 and interferon-gamma. In the blood, the researchers found more of these types of interleukins.
Conclusion
"Taken together, these findings suggest that orally administered vitamin B5 significantly inhibits the in vivo growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis via the regulation of innate immunity and adaptive immunity", write the researchers. "Thus, orally administered VB5 may potentially have important therapeutic implications in the clinical management of tuberculosis."
Source:
Front Immunol. 2018 Feb 26;9:365.
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