Commercially available cashew (Anacardium occidentale L.) nut shell liquid (CNSL) mainly contains the phenolic constituents anacardic acid, cardol, and cardanol. These phenolic constituents are themselves heterogeneous, and each of them contains saturated, monoene, diene, and trienes in the fifteen-carbon side chain. This communication describes the separation of anacardic acid, cardol, and cardanol for industrial application. Anacardic acid was selectively isolated as calcium anacardate. The acid-free CNSL was treated with liquor ammonia and extracted with hexane/ethyl acetate (98:2) to separate the mono phenolic component, cardanol. Subsequently, ammonia solution was extracted with ethyl acetate/hexane (80:20) to obtain cardol.

Mechanisms underlying modern increases in prevalence of human inflammatory diseases remain unclear. The hygiene hypothesis postulates that decreased microbial exposure has, in part, driven this immune dysregulation. However, dietary fatty acids also influence immunity, partially through modulation of responses to microbes. Prior reports have described the direct effects of high fat diets on the gut microbiome and inflammation, and some have additionally shown metabolic consequences for offspring. Our study sought to expand on these previous observations to identify the effects of parental diet on offspring immunity using mouse models to provide insights into challenging aspects of human health. To test the hypothesis that parental dietary fat consumption during gestation and lactation influences offspring immunity, we compared pups of mice fed either a Western diet fatty acid profile or a standard low fat diet. All pups were weaned onto the control diet to specifically test the effects of early developmental fat exposure on immune development. Pups from Western diet breeders were not obese or diabetic, but still had worse outcomes in models of infection, autoimmunity, and allergic sensitization. They had heightened colonic inflammatory responses, with increased circulating bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and muted systemic LPS responsiveness. These deleterious impacts of the Western diet were associated with alterations of the offspring gut microbiome. These results indicate that parental fat consumption can leave a “lard legacy” impacting offspring immunity and suggest inheritable microbiota may contribute to the modern patterns of human health and disease.

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Staphylococcus aureus causes the majority of human skin and soft tissue infections, and is a major infectious cause of mortality. Host defense mechanisms against S. aureus are incompletely understood. Interleukin (IL)-19, -20 and -24 signal through type I and type II IL-20 receptors and are associated with inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. We show here that these cytokines promote cutaneous S. aureus infection in mice by downregulating IL-1β- and IL-17A-dependent pathways. Similar effects of these cytokines were seen in human keratinocytes after S. aureus exposure, and antibody blockade of IL-20 receptor improved outcomes in infected mice. Our findings identify an immunosuppressive role for these cytokines during infection that could be therapeutically targeted to alter susceptibility to infection.