While the relationship between stress and cancer has not been definitely proven, enough information has been gathered to cause researchers to continue to explore the question. For example, the National Cancer Institute reports that some studies of women with breast cancer have shown significantly higher rates of occurrence of this disease among women who have experienced traumatic life events and stress within several years of their diagnosis. These factors include death of a spouse, social isolation, and other psychological factors.
Studies are also under way to explore the effects of stress on the immune response of women already diagnosed with cancer to see if stress reduction can slow the progression of the cancer. One major study conducted by Ohio State University and published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute involved high-stress and low-stress women following surgery for stage II and stage III breast cancer. The researchers found that the women who reported high levels of personal stress had significantly lower blood levels of three important immune factors. The first two were the NK cells, which play a large role in the immune system’s search for tumors and virally infected cells, and T-lymphocytes, also known as white blood cells. When the researchers exposed the NK cells within the bloodstream of the high-stress women to extra amounts of gamma interferon, a compound that naturally enhances NK cell activity and the replication of viruses, they found a third significantly lowered immune response. The more stress a woman reported, the less effect the gamma interferon had on her NK cells.
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