Petter Brodin Lecture Maps Environmental and Hormonal Drivers of Human Immune Variation

Petter Brodin's Global Immunotalks lecture covered human immune system variation and development. He described fixing whole blood at collection to retain neutrophils and lower technical CV, twin studies from Stanford and Mark Davis showing non-heritable environmental factors dominate most immune measures and vaccine responses, and a Karolinska birth cohort of over 500 children linking breast milk oligosaccharides, bifidobacteria and tryptophan metabolites such as indolelactic acid to reduced early gut inflammation. He also presented data on 23 transgender men given testosterone, in which type I interferon pathways were suppressed and TNF/NF-kappaB inflammation induced.