When you get sick or injured—whether it’s from burning your hand or catching the flu—your body goes on a journey. This journey, called a disease trajectory, can lead to full recovery or, in serious cases, even death.
But not everyone experiences the same path. Some people get very sick, while others barely feel it. Scientists have been trying to understand why these paths are so different and how we might change them for the better.
Dr. Janelle Ayres and her team at the Salk Institute have been studying these differences for years. Their latest discovery published in Cell Metabolism may help explain how we can use simple nutrients to help the body recover better from illness.
In a new study, the team found that adding a nutrient called methionine to the diet helped protect mice from dangerous inflammation and death caused by infection. The research also revealed a new role for the kidneys in managing this process.
Inflammation is the body’s natural way of defending itself. It helps call in immune cells to fight off infections and heal wounds. But too much inflammation can be harmful. It can damage tissues and organs, and even lead to death. In fact, in many cases, inflammation—not the infection itself—is what causes the most harm.
The Salk team wanted to see if changing a mouse’s diet could make a difference. They used a bacteria called Yersinia pseudotuberculosis to infect mice and trigger inflammation. The sick mice stopped eating as much, which suggested that their bodies were undergoing stress and losing nutrients.
When researchers checked their blood, they found low levels of methionine—an important amino acid found in foods like meat, eggs, dairy, and some nuts and seeds.
To test if methionine could help, they gave some mice food with added methionine. The results were surprising. These mice handled the infection much better. They were less likely to suffer from extreme weight loss, brain issues, or death.
The methionine seemed to help their kidneys work better, allowing them to remove harmful inflammation-related molecules from the body through urine. Importantly, it did this without weakening the immune system’s ability to fight off the infection.
The scientists also tested methionine in other situations like sepsis and kidney damage. They found similar protective effects, which suggests that methionine might be helpful in more than one type of illness.
This study shows that the kidneys play a much bigger role in controlling inflammation than scientists previously thought. Methionine helped boost kidney filtration, which reduced dangerous inflammation without harming the body’s natural defenses.
This discovery points to a simple but powerful idea: what we eat can strongly influence how we respond to sickness.
While this research was done in mice, it opens up new possibilities for human medicine. Methionine could become a helpful supplement for people dealing with infections, inflammation, or kidney problems, especially those on dialysis.
But scientists caution that we still need human studies before making any changes to diets or recommending supplements.
The idea that something as basic as a nutrient in your food can change the course of illness is both exciting and hopeful. It shows how the smallest details—like amino acid levels—can have a big impact on our health.
This research adds to a growing belief that nutrition can be used as medicine. Dr. Ayres and her team believe that studying how the body protects itself naturally can lead to simple, affordable treatments that help people survive serious illnesses. In the future, something as easy as a nutrient supplement at dinner could play a role in saving lives.
This important study was published in Cell Metabolism on January 22, 2026. It was led by Janelle Ayres and her team at the Salk Institute, including researchers Shrikaar Kambhampati, Arianna Insenga, Katia Troha, and Christian Metallo.
If you care about health, please read studies that vitamin D can help reduce inflammation, and vitamin K could lower your heart disease risk by a third.
For more health information, please see recent studies about new way to halt excessive inflammation, and results showing foods that could cause inflammation.
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