About seasonal pattern & stress

[fullofbeans]

I remember that we had a discussion about seasonal pattern of cancer recurrence.. the following suggest the important role of the neglected granulocytes:


"

Patients with cancer provided granulocytes with a lower than average cancer-killing ability, as did people who reported being stressed, or those over the age of 50.
Remarkably, even the time of year seemed to have an effect on the potency of granulocytes.
"Nobody seems to have any cancer-killing ability during the winter months from November to April," said Dr Cui. In other research, granulocytes from a strain of mice completely resistant to cancer cured the disease when they were transplanted into other mice. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7003019.stm

By the way I have had no luck at trying to find out why granulocyte cancer ability decreasess during the winter months..[me thinking light perhaps..me considering holidays excuses :-)]

but about stress I found this " cancer-killing capacity could be "abolished" by stress: in one anecdote, a grad student from his lab at Wake Forest had been tested just after making his first presentation at a scientific conference, and the normally high level of cancer-fighting activity in his granulocytes was severely depressed. Re-testing him several days later, the activity of his granulocytes had bounced back to normal"


PS: But as usual things are more complex than they seem for certain type of cancer granulocyte may not help i.e. see this 1995 paper entitled "inhibition of tumour growth by elimination of granulocytes"

http://www.jem.org/cgi/reprint/181/1/435.pdf

[AlaskaAngel]

Hi FOB, thanks for sharing the info. Makes me wonder.... in winter when light exposure is harder to get in the northern climates to begin with, if one happens to spend most of their life indoors AND in a high-stress life situation, that would seem to be the worst possible combination.

A.A.