Clinical Aspects of Neuropeptide Research

Abstract

Increasing evidence suggests that depression is found in a high percentage of patients with cancer (Petty and Noyes 1981; Buckberg et al. 1984), but depression appears to be both underdiagnosed and inadequately treated in cancer patients. There is also a growing body of evidence suggesting that experimentally induced stress in animals as well as psychiatric illness and stressful life experience in humans are associated with alterations in both neuroendocrine and immune function. Alterations in immune function have been found in patients with major depression (Kronfol et al. 1983; Schliefer et al. 1984,1985), and there is one report suggesting an epidemiologic relationship between depression and cancer (Shekelle et al. 1981). However, it is not known whether the alterations in immune function found in depression are of clinical significance, and there have been no comprehensive studies of both neuroendocrine and immune function in depressed cancer patients.