*Special episode to support our brothers and sisters joining us on the front lines fighting the COVID 19 pandemic.

The Patient Whisperers' Podcast

*Special episode to support our brothers and sisters joining us on the front lines fighting the COVID 19 pandemic.
Today, we’re talking about the Correlation and Interdependence of Stress and the Immune system and we, The Patient Whisperers, are honored to provide a special gift to our brothers and sisters in the healthcare profession as we all work together on the front lines caring for the whole nation in these unprecedented times.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/

Psychological Stress and the Human Immune System: A Meta-Analytic Study of 30 Years of Inquiry

Suzanne C. Segerstrom and Gregory E. Miller

In mammals, these responses include changes that increase the delivery of oxygen and glucose to the heart and the large skeletal muscles. The result is physiological support for adaptive behaviors such as “fight or flight.” Immune responses to stressful situations may be part of these adaptive responses because, in addition to the risk inherent in the situation (e.g., a predator), fighting and fleeing carries the risk of injury and subsequent entry of infectious agents into the bloodstream or skin. Any wound in the skin is likely to contain pathogens that could multiply and cause infection (Williams & Leaper, 1998). Stress-induced changes in the immune system that could accelerate wound repair and help prevent infections from taking hold would, therefore, be adaptive and selected along with other physiological changes that increased evolutionary fitness.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10204970

Psychological stress, cytokine production, and severity of upper respiratory illness.

Cohen S1, Doyle WJ, Skoner DP.

OBJECTIVE:

The purpose of this study is to assess the role of psychological stress in the expression of illness among infected subjects and to test the plausibility of local proinflammatory cytokine production as a pathway linking stress to illness.

METHODS:

After completing a measure of psychological stress, 55 subjects were experimentally infected with an influenza A virus. Subjects were monitored in quarantine daily for upper respiratory symptoms, mucus production, and nasal lavage levels of interleukin (IL)-6.

RESULTS:

Higher psychological stress assessed before the viral challenge was associated with greater symptom scores, greater mucus weights, and higher IL-6 lavage concentrations in response to infection. The IL-6 response was temporally related to the two markers of illness severity, and mediation analyses indicated that these data were consistent with IL-6 acting as a major pathway through which stress was associated with increased symptoms of illness. However, this pattern of data is also consistent with increases in IL-6 occurring in response to tissue damage associated with illness symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS:

Psychological stress predicts a greater expression of illness and an increased production of IL-6 in response to an upper respiratory infection.

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