HHP doctoral student Rebekah Hunt's paper titled "Can just 15 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise mobilize cytotoxic NK cells into circulation?" was highlighted at the 2024 American Physiology Summit held on April 4–7, 2024 in Long Beach, California. The annual summit held by the American Physiological Society (APS) convenes 3,000 researchers, educators and students from around the world.
The authors of the paper are: Rebekah Hunt, Kais Ali, Rachel Banh, McArthur Bolden, Karl Laurea, Lynssie McBride, Zainab Tafish, Emily LaVoy.
Rebekah Hunt
An increase in natural killer (NK) cells in the bloodstream offers heightened immune activity during exercise and is of particular interest to cancer patients as NK cells can kill tumor cells. It has been observed that acute exercise mobilizes these cells and previous studies demonstrated that exercise bouts of 30 mins or more were particularly helpful in mobilizing these cells. This study investigated if exercise bouts of 15 mins would mobilize these cells as well. The pilot study concluded that moderate activity of 15 mins did increase NK cells in the bloodstream but greater intensity exercise may be required to mobilize particular subsets of NK cells.