Chronic psychological stress and immunity / 中国免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

With the rapid development of our country,people are facing more and more psychological problems.It has been demonstrated that persistent stress and depression,which leads to continuously elevated levels of stress hormones,might eventually compromise host defenses against bacterial or viral infection while increasing the reoccurance of autoimmunity and the incidence of malignancy/metastasis.Even though the molecular mechanisms by which chronic psychological stress inhibits the effector subsets in the immune system have been partially disclosed,it remains elusive whether chronic psychological stress also affects the regulatory subsets and if yes,what are the underlying mechanisms.Here,we review the findings in this field.