Abstract

In the thymus of animals subjected to acute stress, a decrease in lymphoid tissue was found, accompanied by the death of lymphocytes in the cortex and medulla. Acute stress leads to the appearance in the thymus of a large number of degranulating mast cells and actively functioning epithelial tubules. Psychological stress has great impacts on the immune system, particularly the leukocytes distribution. Although the impacts of acute stress on blood leukocytes distribution are well studied, however, it remains unclear how chronic stress affects leukocytes distribution in peripheral circulation. Furthermore, there is no report about the role of spleen in the blood leukocytes distribution induced by stress. Here we show that spleen contributes to the alteration of restraint stress induced blood leukocytes distribution. Our data confirmed that restraint stress induced anxiety-like behavior in mice. Furthermore, we found that restraint stress decreased the CD4/CD8 ratio and elevated the percentages of natural killer cells, monocots and polymorph nuclear myeloid-derived suppressor cell. We demonstrated that activation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) contributes to restraint stress induced alteration of blood leukocyte distribution. Interestingly, we found that splenectomy could reverse the change of CD4/CD8 ratio induced by restraint stress. Together, our findings suggest that activation of HPA axis and SNS was responsible for the blood leukocyte subsets changes induced by restraint stress. Spleen, at least in part, contributed to the alteration in peripheral circulation induced by restraint stress.

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