Psychological stress and anxiety can make seasonal allergy
attacks worse and linger longer, according to research presented
at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association
in Boston.
"People may be setting themselves up to have more persistent
problems by being stressed and anxious when allergy attacks
begin," Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, professor of psychology
and psychiatry at Ohio State University in Columbus noted
in a telephone interview with Reuters Health ahead of the
meeting.
To gauge how stress and anxiety affect allergy sufferers,
Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues recruited 28 men and women with
a history of hay fever and seasonal allergies to participate
in a laboratory study.
On different days, the volunteers were subjected to a low-stress
condition -- reading quietly from magazines -- and to much
more stressful conditions -- giving a 10-minute, videotaped
speech in front of a group of "behavior evaluators" and solving
math problems without paper or pen in front of the group and
then watching their videotaped performance.
The researchers assessed participants' levels of stress and
anxiety and performed standard skin prick allergy tests before
and right after the stressful events, as well as the next
day.
Anxiety following the stressful event, the researchers found,
heightened the magnitude of the allergic reactions induced
by the skin prick tests. These allergic reactions show up
on the forearm as slight wounds, or "wheals."
People who were moderately stressed because of the experiment
had wheals that were 75 percent larger after the stressful
event compared to the same person's response after the low-stress
condition.
People who were highly stressed had wheals that were twice
as large after they were stressed compared to their response
when they were not stressed. Moreover, these highly stressed
people were four times more likely to show allergic wheals
a full day after the stressful event.
This suggests, the researchers say, that highly stressed
people had an ongoing and strengthening response to the allergy-causing
substances. "The stress seemed to affect them into the next
day," explained Kiecolt-Glaser. That is, being stressed seems
to cause a person's allergies to worsen the next day.
According to Ohio State immunologist Dr. Ronald Glaser who
was involved in the study, greater anxiety was associated
with increased production in the body of stress hormones called
catecholamines and the inflammation-related protein called
interleukin-6. He thinks the elevated levels of these compounds
are to blame for the delayed allergic reactions.
This delayed allergic response is "really what's ugly
about allergies," Kiecolt-Glaser noted, because they
are typically unresponsive to antihistamines. She advises
trying to keep stress at a minimum, if possible, during allergy
season.
