THE IMPACT OF STRESS ON THE IMMUNE SYSTEM OF CANCER PATIENT

Commerce and Management

Understanding the connection between stress and cancer is particularly important as anxiety and depression are highly prevalent in patients with cancer. Cancer diagnosis and treatment may cause symptoms that meet the full clinical criteria of post-traumatic stress disorder in up to ~20% of total cases and can lead to long-term alterations in neuroendocrine circuitries. Surgery-related stress has been shown to cause an excess release of catecholamines and prostaglandins perioperatively in patients with cancer, which can promote metastatic progression. Despite the lack of proof that stress causes cancer in humans, there is convincing epidemiological evidence that objective stressors and self-evaluated psychological distress correlate with negative cancer outcomes (progression, metastasis, recurrence, therapeutic failure and increased mortality). Adverse life circumstances in general have been closely associated with a skewing towards pro-inflammatory responses and can dampen antiviral activity in circulating leukocytes. These changes have largely been attributed to glucocorticoid-related pathways and the activation of the adrenergic system. Moreover, gene signatures indicative of the activity of the glucocorticoid, adrenergic, dopaminergic, serotoninergic and muscarinic systems have been closely correlated with unfavourable outcomes in patients with prostate cancer. The adverse effect of stress on cancer outcomes has been replicated in mouse models, allowing to establish causality and to explore the underlying mechanisms. Repeated restraint, male domination or unpredictable chronic mild stress are established procedures to induce stress in rodents . These have been shown to cause behavioural, psychological and biological changes that promote tumour development, metastatic dissemination and therapeutic failure in mice. Moreover, mice held in standard housing conditions are already stressed and alleviating stress by shifting them from the hypothermic to thermoneutral conditions or placing them in an ‘enriched’ environment can significantly reduce tumour growth.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.