Editorial: The Role of Systemic and Cellular Metabolism on Susceptibility to Infections and Responsiveness to Vaccination

The severity of bacterial and viral infections is linked to impaired immune and metabolic disorders, disproportionally affecting individuals with metabolic comorbidities such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. These metabolic disorders are also key predictors of adverse outcomes to infections. Infections by themselves promote both cellular and systemic metabolic alterations resulting in the development of long-term comorbidities. Indeed, the recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic highlighted this important connection, since metabolic complications emerged as key risk factors for the development of severe forms of COVID-19 disease (Steenblock et al., 2021). However, the precise molecular determinants of these associations remain unclear. A greater understanding on how biochemical processes connect disease outcomes in viral and bacterial infections will facilitate the development of more effective host-directed interventions and diagnostic tools for patient stratification or assessment of disease progression. Therefore, this Research Topic aimed at highlighting work that: (1) disentangles how intrinsic immune cellar metabolic processes control viral replication and immunity, (2) dissect the metabolic requirements of immune cells during bacterial infections, and (3) examine systemic metabolic dysregulation during viral infections.