Involvement of stress resilience in the pathogenesis of psychosomatic respiratory diseases

Abstract

Asthma, a heterogeneous disease with varying molecular, biochemical, and cellular inflammatory features, is a respiratory psychosomatic disease, wherein patients can be influenced by psychosocial stress (stress), leading to unstable conditions. Stress is thought to trigger and exacerbate asthma by acting on the neuroendocrine and immune systems via the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Various mechanisms of stress-induced asthma have been proposed, such as the modification of adaptive immune response (T helper type1 cell (TH1) /TH2 imbalance) by stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenalin, and noradrenalin; the induction of airway hyperresponsiveness and mucus hyperproduction by neuropeptides; and steroid resistance due to the reduced expression of glucocorticoid receptors. However, the mechanism of psychosocial stress enhanced allergic inflammation in the airway is still unknown. Chen et al have reported that genomic or epigenomic regulation of ADCYAP1R1, one of the stress resilience-related genes, might be involved in the pathogenesis of childhood asthma. Stress Resilience is to maintain normal psychological and physical functioning, avoiding serious mental illness when exposed to unusual traumatic stress. There might be links between stress resilience and regulation of airway inflammation in asthma. Here, we discuss the future prospects of psychosomatic therapeutic strategies for respiratory psychosomatic disease, such as asthma based on stress resilience.