Psychoneuroimmunology

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNEI) is a term coined by Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen at the University of Rochester in 1975 and is a field of research that studies interactions between social psychology, behavior, and the brain with the endocrine and immune systems of the body. This “mind–body” research is expected to play a major role in the fields of cardiology, gastroenterology, gynecology and obstetrics, internal medicine, orthopedics, pediatrics, and psychiatry.

The original research by Robert Ader was based on the experiment of the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov who stimulated dogs to drool by feeding them when he rung a bell, and subsequently [Page 1445]only ringing the bell. Ader took this experiment further with testing the immune response systems in rats which he found could be conditioned by external stimuli after supplying them with water laced with saccharine and also the drug cytoxan, which induces both nausea and the suppression of the immune system, and then after they became conditions, he used saccharine-laced water alone to get the same immune system response. This led to his major two-volume work, Psychoneuroimmunology, cowritten with David L. Felten and Nicholas Cohen. Felten continued his work at Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, where he discovered that there was a network of nerves that lead to both the blood vessels and the immune system.

Initially, the work on PNEI has resulted in some advances in the treatment of the care-givers for patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (who were more likely to develop severe colds, often with an immune system compromised for anything up to two years). It has also helped with the development of medication for treating a range of people who have high stress levels, which has lowered their immune system and, in turn, has made themselves more susceptible to diseases such as the flu.

This may affect people who are injured, bereaved, undergoing divorce or unemployment, facing examinations, or generally depressed.