This is good news for us humans who might want to use medical technology to reverse immunosuppression; the evolutionary rationale matters less to modern humans in safe conditions, so we shouldn’t necessarily expect an intrinsic tradeoff causing bad side effects.
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Viruses can induce kynurenine production; here, influenza increases TDO and IDO expression & kynurenine production in rat brains: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=TDO+virus&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DM_fb6QYy0QYJ …
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TDO, IDO, kynurenine, and quinolinic acid are found elevated in various viral infections: HIV, hepatitis B and C, herpesviruses, etc.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.4137/IJTR.S26862 …
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Why? Tryptophan depletion is itself an immune defense against some bacteria and viruses. In response to viral infection, the body produces IFN-gamma, which activates IDO and TDO, which make kynurenine. Unfortunately, kynurenine has all the nasty effects mentioned upthread.
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So if you have a *chronic* viral infection, you’re going to keep pumping out kynurenines as a side effect of trying to kill the virus, which cause immunosuppression, which makes you more susceptible to viral infection...it’s a vicious cycle!
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What kinds of drugs inhibit IDO and TDO? Well, azole antifungals (like ketoconazole) and the MAOI antifungal phenelzine (also known as Nardil, the Flame of the West) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=20&q=ido1+inhibitor&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DYbQyk8FoSIMJ …
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The antiviral acyclovir is also an IDO1 inhibitor:https://jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-2094-7-44 …
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Acyclovir inhibits TDO too:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11011-008-9095-4 …
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And so does the antibiotic minocycline:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043466617303848 …
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End of conversation
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