Dietary Components and Immune Function

Dear Colleagues,

Each stage of the body's immune response relies on the presence of nutrients. The energy and nutrients needs of the immune system can be met from exogenous diets. Dietary components can influence the development and maintenance of the immune system or have a very specific role in reducing chronic inflammation. The healthy diet regulates the fine balance of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory mediators and immune cells to help the immune system fight infection. They can also protect our bodies from harmful autoimmune, chronic inflammatory diseases or cancer and fetal infection following cancer or before harmful autoimmune. In contrast, malnutrition or excessive intake of micronutrients can impair immune function. For example, iron supplementation will increase morbidity and mortality of those in malaria endemic regions. How can different dietary components effectively treat immune deficiencies associated with inadequate intake? Can specific nutritional interventions further enhance immune function in subclinical Settings to prevent inflammatory disease from infection or chronic disease? We hope these and other important questions can be answered in this Special Issue.

For this Special Issue, we welcome submissions of evidence-based manuscripts, reviews or meta-analyses, and hope that will share valuable knowledge, including but not limited to research on different dietary components related to the immune system. Ultimately we hope the content will be useful for clinical practitioners and inspire further innovative research.

Prof. Dr. Ping Zhang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nutrients is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.