Abstract
Communication between the neuroendocrine and immune system is crucial to host defence in both health and disease for it provides a means whereby the central nervous system may fine tune the immune system and thereby bring to bear the influence of a variety of physical, emotional and environmental factors. Several lines of evidence now suggest that humoral factors originating within the immune system (e.g. cytokines, ecosanoids and peptides) exert specific regulatory actions within the brain and pituitary gland, whilst neural and endocrine factors contribute to the control of immunological activity (Weigent and Blalock, 1987). Central to this communication are the thymic hormones, thymulin, thymosinαl and thymopoietin which provide the basis of the humoral link between the thymus and the hypothalamo-pituitary complex and are themselves subject to regulation by hormones derived from the pituitary gland and peripheral endocrine organs (Millington and Buckingham, 1992).
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Kendall, M.D., Loxley, H.D., Dashwood, M.R., Singh, S., Stebbings, R., Buckingham, J.C. (1994). Could Acth be of Prime Importance in Rapidly Altering the Thymocyte Composition in the Thymus?. In: Heinen, E., Defresne, M.P., Boniver, J., Geenen, V. (eds) In Vivo Immunology. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 355. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2492-2_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2492-2_18
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