Abstract
Recent clinical evidence suggests that the therapeutic effect of massage involves the immune system and that this can be exploited as an adjunct therapy together with standard drug-based approaches. In this study, we investigated the mechanisms behind these effects exploring the immunomodulatory function of stroking as a surrogate of massage-like therapy in mice. C57/BL6 mice were stroked daily for 8 days either with a soft brush or directly with a gloved hand and then analysed for differences in their immune repertoire compared to control non-stroked mice. Our results show that hand- but not brush-stroked mice demonstrated a significant increase in thymic and splenic T cell number (p < 0.05; p < 0.01). These effects were not associated with significant changes in CD4/CD8 lineage commitment or activation profile. The boosting effects on T cell repertoire of massage-like therapy were associated with a decreased noradrenergic innervation of lymphoid organs and counteracted the immunosuppressive effect of hydrocortisone in vivo. Together our results in mice support the hypothesis that massage-like therapies might be of therapeutic value in the treatment of immunodeficiencies and related disorders and suggest a reduction of the inhibitory noradrenergic tone in lymphoid organs as one of the possible explanations for their immunomodulatory function.
Highlights
We are interested in ways by which emotional wellbeing regulates the immune response[14,15]
The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect of massage-like stroking on the immune system in an experimental model
Both human and non-human stroking showed a trend towards an increase in T cell number in lymphoid organs
Summary
We are interested in ways by which emotional wellbeing regulates the immune response[14,15]. Intrigued by recent clinical investigations that have explored the use of massage as mean of providing a combined positive effect on the emotional wellbeing and immune response[13,16,17,18,19], we sought to set up an experimental system that would allow us to explore the immunomodulatory effects of massage-like therapy in mice. To this aim we tested the effects of stroking as surrogate for massage and we compared human (finger-driven) and non-human (brush stroke-driven) approaches to assess two different types of stroking. Our results provide experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that massage-like therapies have an immunomodulatory effect and suggest another possible cellular and molecular mechanism behind the therapeutic effects of this therapy
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