Your body fat may be protecting you against infections

iStock/Getty Images Plus

Did you pile on the pounds this Christmas? At least you can take some comfort in the fact that not all fat is bad. Evidence in mice and monkeys suggests it is important for storing important immune cells and may even make them more effective at fighting infection.

Yasmine Belkaid at the US National Institutes of Health and her team have found that a type of immune cell – called a memory T-cell – seems to be stored in the body fat of mice. These cells learn to fight infection. Once