Abstract
In retrospect, the foundations for Nutritional Immunology emerged in the early 1800s with the finding that severe malnutrition would lead to thymic atrophy, and for most of that century, all evidence for a relationship between malnutrition and the immune system was based on anatomical findings. With the discovery of vitamins, it became evident that single essential nutrients each played an important role in host resistance. During the 1920s and 1930s, vitamin A became known as the “anti-infective” vitamin, and the first attempts were made to use vitamin A therapeutically during infectious illnesses.
With the gradual emergence of knowledge about the details of immune system functions, malnutrition was found to depress humoral immunity (by reducing the production of antibodies to vaccines), cell mediated immunity (by inducing anergy to skin tests), and allergic symptoms. But the first systematic studies of immunonutritional interrelationships in laboratory animals were initiated in 1947 by Abraham E. Axelrod and his students. Human studies followed soon thereafter, and by the late 1970s the field of nutritional immunology was well established.
The importance of vitamin A in reducing the morbidity and mortality caused by measles and other infectious illnesses has now re-emerged. The potential importance of correcting vitamin A deficiency, as a practical and inexpensive public health strategy to reduce childhood mortality in the Third World, is being tested in many locations, with The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health playing an important role.