Abstract
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, monocytes and polymorphonuclear 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.
Highlights
Chronic stress is known to have many adverse effects on human health[1]
We found that mice undergoing 1 cycle or 7 cycles of restraint stress took similar time to first enter the center of the open filed, spent similar time in the center of the open field and showed similar frequency to enter the center of the open filed compare with control mice (Fig. 1B,C and D), which suggest that short-term restraint stress did not affect anxiety-like behavior
These results of our study demonstrate a novel role of spleen in the restraint stress-induced blood leukocyte subsets changes
Summary
It is important to investigate the psychological and biological mechanisms by which chronic stress weaken health or exacerbate disease, which will enable the development of biobehavioral and pharmacological treatments to ameliorate the adverse effects of chronic stress. There is no report about the role of spleen in the stress-induced changes of blood leukocyte distribution. The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of restraint stress on blood leukocyte subsets distribution and the role of spleen in stress-induced changes of blood leukocyte subsets. Splenectomy 14 days before restraint stress prevented the changes of CD4/CD8 ratio induced by restraint stress Taken together, these data showed activation of HPA axis and SNS was responsible for the blood leukocyte subsets changes induced by restraint stress and splenectomy partially prevented the changes of leukocyte subsets induced by restraint stress
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