Interesting article........
Skin provides the first level of defense to infection, serving not only as a physical barrier, but also as a site for white blood cells to attack invading bacteria and viruses. The immune cells in skin can over-react, however, resulting in inflammatory skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis and psoriasis.
Stress can trigger an outbreak in patients suffering from inflammatory skin conditions. This cross talk between stress perception, which involves the brain, and the skin is mediated the through the "brain-skin connection". Yet, little is know about the means by which stress aggravates skin diseases.
Researchers lead by Dr. Petra Arck of Charité, University of Medicine Berlin and McMaster University in Canada, hypothesized that stress could exacerbate skin disease by increasing the number of immune cells in the skin. To test this hypothesis, they exposed mice to sound stress. Dr. Arck's group found that this stress challenge resulted in higher numbers of mature white blood cells in the skin. Furthermore, blocking the function of two proteins that attract immune cells to the skin, LFA-1 and ICAM-1, prevented the stress-induced increase in white blood cells in the skin.
Taken together, these data suggest that stress activates immune cells, which in turn are central in initiating and perpetuating skin diseases. Fostered by the present observation, the goal of future studies in Dr. Arck's group is to prevent stress-triggered outbreaks of skin diseases by recognizing individuals at risk and identifying immune cells suitable to be targeted in therapeutic interventions.
This work was supported by grants from the German Research Foundation and the Charité .
Journal reference:
Babs- I am awfully stressed out. I was wondering if this applied to me but then I thought it said stress causes psorasis or dermatitis and I have no kind of rash.
The other night I was lying in bed and my palms started and then my feet- then my brain started running away with itchy palms & soles being caused by liver problems. Then I started getting itchy all over- I couldn't stop scratching. I thought I was going to wake my husband up for sure! LOL I felt like flopping all around to get rid of the itch. You know I wonder if it's this new Icy Hot PM
OMG.. maybe it is the Icy HOt!! and i was going to buy it!! try it without tonight... let us know..It is true my psoriasis gets very ithcy when I stress. I just want to keep itching till the skin bleeds it is terrible so I try not to stress and that may mean when I get home form work the phone gets shut off and nothing gets done till I feel calmer. OMG no wonder it looks like a bomb went off in this place. heheheheehe meme