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Auteur

Laboratorio di Immunologia, Dipartimento di Biologia e Patologia Cellulare e Molecolare, Università di Napoli “Federico II”, via S. Pansini, 5 - 80131 - Napoli, Italy. gmatarese@napoli.com

INTRODUCTION Undernutrition has been associated with impairment of cell-mediated immunity. Indeed, it predisposes to death in infectious diseases in man and laboratory animals [1, 2]. The recent cloning of the obese gene product, leptin, has determined fundamental insight into the understanding of the regulation of food intake, basal metabolism and energy expenditure [3]. Initially, leptin was considered an anti-obesity hormone. According [...]