The thymus is an immune organ, so can thymosin improve immunity?

In daily life, we often see advertisements for products claiming to improve immunity, many of which include star ingredients such as thymosin and immunoglobulin.

But can these products really be used to enhance the body's immunity? Are they really safe and without side effects for daily use? Are the merchants trying to change the concept?

Before answering these questions, we must first understand what the thymus, the "production workshop of thymosin", is.

The thymus gland is as small as a walnut, but it has great uses

The thymus is an important human immune organ. The so-called "immunity" refers to the process of the body fighting against microorganisms such as bacteria or viruses. If our body's immune system is compared to a country's defense system, then the thymus is the "training school" that can cultivate T cells of the "armed forces" .

This mysterious school is located at the rear of the upper end of the manubrium (located in the center of the thorax, shaped like a sword, connecting the ribs and the spine) . It is generally divided into two asymmetrical lobes, left and right. It is soft and long and flat. The thymus of an adult is nearly the size of a walnut. But this small thymus has great uses.

In the thymus school, T cells have to learn two courses

In the school of the thymus, T cells mainly learn the courses of "positive selection" and "negative selection", respectively mastering the abilities of "recognizing and binding to foreign antigens" and "refusing to bind to self-antigens".

These are two core courses. If "positive selection" is not learned well, the body's ability to identify pathogenic microorganisms will be weakened . The situation of "the virus is right in front of us, but the T cells are indifferent" will occur. The virus can take this opportunity to replicate in large quantities and gain an advantage in numbers, resulting in the body's inability to defeat the virus with its own immunity alone, and medical intervention is needed. Patients who "failed to learn" the "positive selection" course usually have low immunity, are easily infected by bacteria, and often get sick.

If "negative selection" is not learned well, T cells will turn their guns on their own people, attack their own tissues, organs or cells, and cause serious autoimmune diseases . For example, rheumatoid arthritis is caused by T cells attacking their own joint tissues as foreign antigens, which causes patients to suffer from unbearable joint pain and impaired mobility; T cells of lupus patients will attack their own skin, kidneys, joints, etc., causing symptoms such as fever, fatigue, joint pain, and rash; type 1 diabetes, which is more common in adolescents, is the result of T cells attacking their own pancreatic islet cells, resulting in insufficient insulin secretion. These diseases seriously affect the quality of life of patients.

In order to reduce the occurrence of "fish slipping through the net of nine-year compulsory education" and ensure the quality of teaching, a normal person's thymus will produce a small polypeptide molecule substance called thymosin. Like an assistant teacher, it can help the "thymus school" cultivate more outstanding "T cell students" and play an important role in the process of T cells "learning knowledge (maturity)", "notifying messages (activation)" and "stabilizing state (stability)".

Since thymosin plays an important role in the process of cultivating T cells, can the use of thymosin enhance human immunity? For this question, we still need to analyze it based on the score.

Clinical application and daily use are not the same thing

Thymosin, as an immune response regulator, has been clinically used to treat severe infections such as sepsis. It has also been used to treat severe COVID-19, achieving good therapeutic results.

The study found that the mortality rate of severe COVID-19 patients treated with thymosin injection dropped from 30.00% to 11.11% compared with the control group patients who did not receive the injection. The specific mechanism is currently unclear and needs further study.

But this does not affect the popularity of thymosin. After all, "fame brings trouble." Nowadays, a large number of health products or infant foods under the banner of thymosin have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, claiming that they can improve immunity and induce consumers to buy.

However, my advice to everyone is: do not use thymosin products in your daily life without medical advice . This is because thymosin is a natural polypeptide that can be synthesized by the human body. Our body has a certain adaptability and can maintain its own homeostasis. Blindly supplementing in a healthy state will disrupt the balance in the body. "Too much is as bad as too little."

The situations in which thymosin is applicable are extremely complex, and it is difficult for ordinary people to self-assess. In the United States, thymosin was once called an "orphan drug" for the treatment of rare diseases. This type of patient population is small, and the economic value of new drug research and development is less than the research investment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will only approve the use of thymosin for diseases that have problems with thymosin synthesis. For patients with other diseases, the positive therapeutic effects of the drug may not offset the side effects, resulting in unbearable consequences.

Taking thymosin orally is usually of little use and may be harmful

As a small polypeptide molecule, thymosin will be digested into amino acids in the stomach after oral administration, thus losing its function. Daily health care products are often taken in the form of mixed drinks. Putting aside its content in the product, after being digested in the stomach, the amount of thymosin that can be absorbed in the intestines is even less, so how can it be effective?

In addition, patients with high blood sugar should also pay attention to the side effects of oral thymosin health products - in order to improve the taste, manufacturers will also add various sugars to the products, which will cause the patient's blood sugar to further increase.

In clinical practice, thymosin is usually administered by injection, which does not need to be digested by the stomach, and the drug can easily reach the therapeutic concentration and last for a long time. If you want to administer it orally, regular pharmaceutical companies will make it in the form of "enteric-coated tablets", wrapping the tablets with special "enteric coatings". After swallowing, the enteric coatings will slowly dissolve in the body , and the active ingredients of the drug will be released when it reaches the intestines, so that the drug can maintain the therapeutic concentration.