Stress induced neuroendocrine-immune plasticity: A role for the spleen in peripheral inflammatory disease and inflammaging?

Research over the past decade has revealed close interaction between the nervous and immune systems in regulation of peripheral inflammation linking psychosocial stress with chronic somatic disease and aging. Moreover emerging data suggests that chronic inflammations lead to a pro-inflammatory status underlying premature aging called inflammaging. In this context, the spleen can be seen as a switch board monitoring peripherally derived neuroendocrine-immune mediators in the blood and keeping up a close communication with the central stress response via its mainly sympathetic innervation.

Profiling mRNA of the graying human hair follicle constitutes a promising state-of-the-art tool to assess its aging: an exemplary report.

Determining hitherto uninvestigated and safe targets to halt the aging process is important in our aging society. Graying is a hallmark of the aging process and may be used to identify aging tissue for comparative analysis. Here we analyzed differential gene expressions between pigmented, gray, and white human scalp skin hair follicles (HFs) from identical donors.

The neuroimmune connection interferes with tissue regeneration and chronic inflammatory disease in the skin.

Research over the past decades has revealed close interactions between the nervous and immune systems that regulate peripheral inflammation and link psychosocial stress with chronic somatic disease. Besides activation of the sympathetic and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, stress leads to increased neurotrophin and neuropeptide production in organs at the self-environment interface. The scope of this short review is to discuss key functions of these stress mediators in the skin, an exemplary stress-targeted and stress-sensitive organ.

Stress, atopy and allergy: A re-evaluation from a psychoneuroimmunologic persepective.

Since the early days of psychosomatic thinking, atopic disease was considered exemplary. In the 70s and 80s numerous reports stated increased anxiety, depression or ill stresscoping in atopics in correlation with enhanced disease activity. Employed patient groups however were small and diverse and controls rare.

Substance P is a key mediator of stress-induced protection from allergic sensitization via modified antigen presentation.

Interaction between the nervous and immune systems greatly contributes to inflammatory disease. In organs at the interface between our body and the environment, the sensory neuropeptide substance P (SP) is one key mediator of an acute local stress response through neurogenic inflammation but may also alter cytokine balance and dendritic cell (DC) function. Using a combined murine allergic inflammation/noise stress model with C57BL/6 mice, we show in this paper that SP--released during repeated stress exposure--has the capacity to markedly attenuate inflammation.

Nerve growth factor partially recovers inflamed skin from stress-induced worsening in allergic inflammation.

Neuroimmune dysregulation characterizes atopic disease, but its nature and clinical impact remain ill-defined. Induced by stress, the neurotrophin nerve growth factor (NGF) may worsen cutaneous inflammation. We therefore studied the role of NGF in the cutaneous stress response in a mouse model for atopic dermatitis-like allergic dermatitis (AlD).

The efficacy of classical massage on stress perception and cortisol following primary treatment of breast cancer.

To investigate the efficacy of classical massage on stress perception and mood disturbances, 34 women diagnosed with primary breast cancer were randomized into an intervention or control group. For a period of 5 weeks, the intervention group (n = 17) received biweekly 30-min classical massages. The control group (n = 17) received no additional treatment to their routine health care.

Skin and hair follicle innervation in experimental models: a guide for the exact and reproducible evaluation of neuronal plasticity.

The remodelling of skin innervation is an instructive example of neuronal plasticity in the peripheral nervous system. Cutaneous innervation displays dramatic plasticity during morphogenesis, adult remodelling, skin diseases and after skin nerve lesions. To recognize even subtle changes or abnormalities of cutaneous innervation under different experimental conditions, it is critically important to use a quantitative approach.