By Cort Johnson in Simmaron Research.

Dr. Maureen Hanson leads one of the three NIH funded ME/CFS research centers, but her ME/CFS research doesn’t stop there.  Using samples from Dr. Daniel Peterson provided by the Simmaron Research Foundation, she’s also been assessing the metabolism of one of the most important cells in our immune systems: our T-cells.

T-cells affect a large part of our adaptive immune response that clears out infections. They do this by regulating our immune response (CD-4 or Helper T-cells) and/or by killing off pathogens that have infected other cells (CD-8 or cytotoxic T-cells).

Prior to getting activated, T-cells are primarily on sentry duty.  Once activated by dendritic cells presenting little bits of pathogens to them things change dramatically, however. The T-cells rev up their cellular engines to order to start pumping out cytokines or clones en masse in order to stop the infection. Both parts of energy production – glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation –  have to jump into action.

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