“…Among them, IL-2, originally identified as a T cell growth factor, has been reported to affect neuroendocrine functions, stimulating the pituitary-adrenocortical (P-A) axis [4,5,[7][8][9]17] and catecholamine release [7], and suppressing luteinizing hormone [29], testosterone [12] and melatonin levels [16]. No influence was reported on insulin levels [7], and effects on pituitary growth hormone, prolactin, thyroid-stimulating hormone, and folliclestimulating hormone releases are not conclusive [15,16,29]. Among these findings, we considered that the P-A activation is particularly important, since glucocorticoids have a variety of immuno-suppressive and anti-inflammatory actions, including decreases in IL-2 production [11] and IL-2R expression [10,23] in the lymphocytes.…”