Hormonal Modulation of the Human Autologous Mixed Lymphocyte Reaction

Abstract

“Mens sana in corpore sano”. This roman proverb expresses beautifully the ancient recognition of the organism unity and it implies awareness of mutual influences between mind and body. As a consequence, it should not be surprising to find, in our analytical era, specific connections between the major homestatic device of the mind — the neuroendocrine system- and the major homestatic device of the body — the immune system. In fact, several years details of these connections are increasingly piled to give a complicated and still confusing picture. A rather exhaustive review of our knowledge of the field may be found in the recently published book “Psychoneuroimmunology” (R. Ader, ed., 1981). Most recently however, the field of neuroimmunomodulation has become fashionable and the list of neurohormones known to have important immunomodulatory properties has increased (Johnson et al., 1982; Mathews et al., 1983; Plotnikoff and Miller, 1983; Miller et al., 1984; Faith et al and Murgo et al., 1984). On the other hand, the already proposed view of lymphocytes producing messengers for the neuroendocrine system (Pierpaoli and Maestroni, 1977; Maestroni and Pierpaoli, 1981) has been further confirmed and detailed (Smith and Blalock, 1981; Smith et al., 1983). The mechanisms by which both the neuroendocrine and the immune system synergizes in order to preserve the organism from environment challenges are thus becoming slowly clearer. The so called psychosomatic integrity appears as a finely tuned balance of neuroendocrine and immune interactions. It becomes also more conceivable that a deranged or exaggerated psychoneuroendocrine response to environmental stimuli or a continuous exposure to stress events may lead to pathological alterations of the immune system.