Stress Damages Immune System and Health

Discovery Medicine, Volume 5, Number 26, Pages 165-169, April 2005 There is an extensive body of scientific literature related to the field of research called psychoneuroimmunology. Clinical studies, backed up by mechanism studies, have provided convincing evidence that the central nervous system (CNS) interacts with the endocrine and immune systems and that these interactions are bi-directional. Stress has been a focal point in this body of literature because it is known that stress can induce immune dysregulation across many aspects of the humoral and cellular immune responses. These studies have dated back to the 1960s and 1970s, and have included some very elegant studies involving animal models. The important outcome of this research is that stress-induced immune dysregulation can produce changes that are not only statistically significant but, most importantly, biologically significant in terms of health risk.