Parasites polarize macrophages to protect against type 2 diabetes

The immune regulation mechanism induced by parasites may help to develop new methods to treat inflammatory diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. Different host macrophage subpopulations play different roles in parasitic infection. Controlling the polarity of M1/M2 macrophages is a potential target for prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes. The role and mechanism of macrophage polarization in parasite protection of type 2 diabetes were discussed in this paper.

A literature review was conducted by searching for literature in databases such as ACADEMIA, NCBI, PubMed, Springer, etc., including English studies published between 2007 and 2023, which can be searched in multiple indexes including but not limited to Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, etc.

Parasitic infection can improve the therapeutic effect of type 2 diabetes by affecting the polarization of macrophages, such as reducing body weight, oral glucose tolerance and fasting glucose, expression of fat related genes, adipocyte size and fat volume. The mechanism may be related to increasing the number of M2 macrophages, activating M2 macrophage markers, or enhancing the synergistic effect of macrophages and other related immune substances.

Parasitic infection can induce model animals to prevent T2D by changing the polarization state of macrophages. More investigations are needed in the future to clarify its role and potential mechanisms.