Review Article A Possible Change Process of Inflammatory Cytokines in the Prolonged Chronic Stress and Its Ultimate Implications for Health

Copyright © 2014 Rui Tian et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sustained stress triggers series of changes in the brain and the body. At the early stage of stress, the activated hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) axis can upregulate the levels of glucocorticoid (GCs) and catecholamines (CAs), respectively, and then they in turn inhibit the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines directly or indirectly while promoting the secretion of anti-inflammatory cytokines. At the prolonged stage, the sustained activated HPA demonstrates cortisol-resistance. At the same time, the inflammation related transcription pathway, such as nuclear-factor kappa-B (NF