Stress and Rheumatic Diseases

Central Sensitization and Descending Facilitation in Chronic Pain State

“…It is well known that chronic psychoemotional stress and anxiety enhance pain sensitivity in human (Ashkinazi & Vershinina, 1999;Rhudy & Meagher, 2000). Stress has also been found to exacerbate and could contribute to the etiology of chronic painful disorders, such as, fibromyalgia (Clauw, 2009;Wood, 2004), low back pain (Pincus et al, 2002), irritable bowel syndrome (Delvaux, 1999), rheumatoid arthritis (Herrmann et al, 2000) and headache (Nash & Thebarge, 2006). A variety of environmental and/or psychological stressful stimuli have been shown to affect pain sensitivity.…”

The Pathogenetic Link Between Stress and Rheumatic Diseases

“…With respect to RA, stress may be a provoking factor. However, during the course of the disease, minor stress could aggravate SLE and RA (Herrmann et al, 2000). In contrast, strong major stress, which is likely accompanied by a large and long-lived release of stress axes mediators, was associated with a decrease in disease activity (Cutolo & Straub, 2006).…”

“…Patients with RA under greater perceived stress who do not use active coping strategies appear to be at risk of psychological comorbidity and may therefore benefit from interventions teaching specific active coping strategies (Treharne et al, 2007). Optimistic and confronting coping strategies were found most frequently and perceived to be most effective against distress (Herrmann et al, 2000). Furthermore, a sample of patients with RA who completed a stress management training program (such as self-efficacy, coping strategies, and helplessness) had a decrease of pain and depression due to beneficial changes in the arenas of self-efficacy (the belief that one can perform a specific behaviour or task in the future), coping strategies (an individual's confidence in his or her ability to manage pain), and helplessness (perceptions of control regarding arthritis) (Rhee, 2000).…”

“…Coping behaviours in response to the negative threat of a chronic or severe medical illness serve to reduce psychological distress (Rao, 2009). One of the important factors to sustain a psychological well-being is the social background; in particular functioning of the family is of outstanding importance for clinical and psychological outcomes (Herrmann et al, 2000). On the other hand, personality and social relationships play an important role in almost every aspect of stress and coping.…”

Recent Advances in the Treatment of Neurological Autoimmune Disorders

“…This was also supported from the several past studies that emotional stress was highly proportionate for predicting the disease onset. These two are related because, stress presumably shoots the neuroendochrine triggers that are predicted to alter the immune function or the cytokine levels ending up with the disease generation (Herrmann et al, 2000;Stojanovich & Marisavljevich, 2008). Also, stress induces the expression of heat shock proteins that are highly immunogenic with a potential of triggering autoimmune diseases (Kanwar et al, 2001).…”