Human psychoneuroimmunology today

Abstract

Studies in human psychoneuroimmunology began around 1919, but a systematic approach wasn't used until the work of Solomon in the 1960s. Recently, the new specialty has achieved relative independence due to considerable data acquisition. Stress research has revealed relationships between neuroendocrine and immune changes. In parallel, increasing evidence of immunological alterations in psychiatric diseases has expanded the field; presently, immunological correlates of psychosomatic diseases and personality are sought. On the other hand, while immunological disease has been psychologically assessed for many years, a clear-cut link between psyche and immunological changes has yet to be shown. This fact, along with the therapeutic implications of advancing knowledge, will influence strongly the future trends of psychoneuroimmunology. Concepts emerging from the study of this field will be of heuristic value to both psychiatry and immunology and will help define new and expanded limits for both disciplines.

Personality, Endocrine and Immune Changes after Eight Months in Healthy Individuals under Normal Daily Stress

“…However, the immune pa rameters we investigated are among the most commonly assessed in human psychoimmunological studies [37], A third limitation con cerns the restricted size of the sample. Several studies have already shown significant changes in immune functions after severe life stress [6,9,37], A larger sample could proba bly increase the possibility of detecting changes related to severe or important life events, and thus our results need to be repli cated with a larger sample.…”

“…In recent years, a variety of studies have at tempted to assess the impact of stress on immune [3][4][5] and endocrine [6,7] system function by either correlating ratings of life stress with immune and endocrine physiology [8,9], or by sampling blood from volunteers before and after predictable stressors, such as examinations [10,11], preoperative stress [12], divorce [13], death of the spouse [14], conditioning procedures [15][16][17][18][19], and others [20,21]. On the whole, these studies demon strated stress-related changes in immune and endocrine system function, including de creased natural killer (NK) cell activity and decreased lymphocyte responses to the mito gens phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and concanavalin A (Con A), increased plasma cortisol, adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) and growth hor mone (GH) levels.…”

Effects of nefazodone on the development of experimentally induced tumors in stressed rodents

“…Sterilized food (Ultrasorb, PANLAB, Barcelona, Spain) and water were given ad libitum. Chronic injection of drugs may induce stressassociated effects on immunity and cancer (Riley 1975(Riley , 1981Biondi and Kotzalidis 1990). In our previous studies, we demonstrated that stress induced by the daily injection of placebo was enough to enhance MTV-induced tumor development (Freire-Garabal et al 1991).…”

“…Moderate chronic or intermittent stress may predispose such mice to an increased risk of mammary carcinoma, possibly through a resultant compromise of their immunological competence or tumor surveillance system, whereas adequate protection from physiological stress may reduce mammary tumor occurrence in mice (Riley 1975(Riley , 1981. Handling, capturing, and daily administration of drugs may induce stress-associated effects on immunity and cancer (Riley 1975(Riley , 1981Biondi and Kotzalidis 1990).…”

Personality and Psychopathology in Patients with Temporomandibular Joint Pain-Dysfunction Syndrome

“…Linear models of symptom formation should thus be replaced by biopsychosocial or multifactorial models, focusing not on issues of specific aetiology, but on dynamic interactional processes involving predisposing, triggering and buffering factors [36]. The issue is further complicated by the fact that the stress reaction involves many equilibrium-stabilising mechanisms interacting at the level of cardinal physiological systems such as the neuroimmune system [37], the neuroendocrine system [38]and the neuromuscular system.…”