How Can Chronic Stress Lead To Cancer?

Let’s Get Started!

In a big discovery, researchers found something super important: stress might make cancer spread faster. This new study looked at mice and showed that when they were always stressed, cancer could move around more easily, especially to the lungs. It also messed up the inside of their bodies, making it easier for cancer to grow and spread. This helps explain why people who are really stressed out might have a harder time fighting cancer.

Chronic Stress Lead To Cancer: Understanding The Relationship

For lots of people with cancer, it’s a scary journey full of worry, not just about what might happen, but also about the tough treatments they’ll have to go through. It’s not just a mental thing; it affects the body too, messing with stuff like memory, thinking, heart health, digestion, and the immune system.

“Stress is just part of being a cancer patient,” says Xue-Yan He, who used to work at Cold Spring Harbor. “Imagine being told you have cancer. You can’t help but think about it all the time – about your health, insurance, and your family. So it’s really important to figure out how stress affects us.”

One big part of this stress is a hormone called glucocorticoids. It helps us deal with stress, but it also makes the body a nicer place for cancer to grow and spread.

Chronic Stress Lead To Cancer: What Does The Research Tell Us?

The research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory shows how being stressed for a long time messes up our body clock, especially for a type of white blood cell called neutrophils. These stressed-out neutrophils start making sticky webs of DNA called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Usually, these traps help catch germs, but with cancer, they make it easier for cancer cells to settle and grow in different parts of the body, like the lungs.

To see how this works, the researchers stressed out mice with cancer in the lab. After removing the tumors, they stressed the mice, and something surprising happened: the cancer spread way more. Xue-Yan He, one of the researchers, noticed that the stress hormone, glucocorticoids, made the neutrophils make more NETs, which helped the cancer spread faster.

What’s really interesting is that stress hormones in the body play a big role in this whole process. They work through a special part of the neutrophils called a receptor. When the researchers messed with this part – by either getting rid of the neutrophils, blocking the receptors, or getting rid of the sticky NETs with a special enzyme – the extra cancer spread caused by stress stopped completely.

“After we did that, the stressed mice didn’t get more cancer spread,” says He. This shows that stress, neutrophils, and cancer spreading are all connected.

Let’s Wrap Up!

This study, featured in Cancer Cell, suggests exciting possibilities for stopping cancer from spreading in people dealing with long-term stress. By stopping the formation of sticky NETs or blocking stress hormone receptors on certain white blood cells, we might be able to shield patients from stress making cancer worse.

The impact of this research is huge. It shows that handling stress is super important during cancer treatment and reveals new clues for stopping cancer spread. As we learn more about how our minds affect our bodies, it’s becoming clear that managing stress isn’t just about feeling better—it could save lives.

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