Relations between aggressive behavior, immune activity, and disease susceptibility

Psychoneuroimmunology has sought to analyze the effects of stress on the immune function and the way in which emotional states and other psychological processes influence the immune response. Agonistic interactions may be considered a special form of psychological stress: social stress, thereby constituting a natural stress model that may be useful for studying the effects of this phenomenon on the immune system. The majority of studies in this area were carried out with mammals, mainly rodents. In general, results have shown a reduction in diverse humoral response measurements in submissive subjects and indicated that stress produced by agonistic interaction also results in the decrease of diverse cellular immune parameters, although this inhibitory effect is not global. In short, despite the diversity of paradigms used and the existence of some contradictory results, it may be concluded that low social ranking, submissive social status, or subjection to threat or attack behavior is linked to a state of immunodepression. As regards the influence of this type of social stress on disease susceptibility, some studies indicate that submissive subjects have a lower resistance to tumoral development and viral infections, although not all studies have obtained consistent results in this area.