Role of Anxiety and Depression in Altering Immune System Associated with Breast Cancer. Systematic Review

Abstract

Masoumeh Ahmed Kazemi, Hamid Yahay Hussain

Background: Focusing on basic and clinical research, psycho-neuroimmunology researchers are looking at how the factors that cause anxiety and depression and their negative emotions can affect physiological and health conditions. Clinical studies have shown that the central nervous system is associated with endocrine and immune systems.

Objectives: To investigate the impact of depression and anxiety on developing breast cancer through immune disturbance pathway

Methodology: The present study is a descriptive review of systematic review studies conducted in accordance with the guidelines for preferred cases for reporting systematic and meta-analysis review articles (prisma). Electronic databases including ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed, and Scopus, were searched from 2012 to 2020. The search strategy psychological, immune response, anxiety disorder, depression, and psychoneuroimmunology. Additionally, we searched the references of retrieved articles to find additional included a combination of the following Medical Subjects Headings (MeSH) terms: breast cancer, potentially related studies. We have considered herbal therapies, which were applied orally, or topically. The content of all articles was evaluated qualitatively after extracting from the desired databases with PRISMA checklist.

Results: The impact of psychological problems on people’s illness is very large, when people have a lot of psychological pressure, the incidence will be higher than ordinary people. Health Psychology considers human health to be a complex entity and believes that disease is not caused by a single factor but is the product of biological, psychological, and social factors. Recent research has previously confirmed the effect of psychosocial factors such as stress and how it reacts to the onset and course of the disease. Most of the patients with malignant tumor had negative emotional problems such as anxiety and depression. Depression in cancer is markedly different from depression in healthy individuals, and involves a unique symptomatology and a strong biological etiology.

Conclusions: A better understanding of the bidirectional communication between the neuroendocrine and immune systems could contribute to new clinical and treatment strategies.

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