We have been designated by the National Institutes of Health as one of the five Mind/Body Centers to conduct research on the interactions among the mind and body in health and disease.

This Center is named The Center for Stress and Wound Healing since the research supported by this center grant will focus on the impact of stress on the immune system and how that can affect wound healing, particularly the early stages. This center grant was awarded to The Ohio State University on October 1st, 1999 and will be supported through September 2004.

It is now well established that the central nervous system (CNS), the endocrine system, and the immune system interact with each other, and that a variety of stressors can down-regulate/ dysregulate the immune response by affecting the interplay of these systems. Social interactions and attitudes can influence the impact of stress on the immune response. It is also now clearly accepted that psychological factors can affect the immune system in humans in a variety of ways.

The immune system plays a major role in the regulation of wound repair. The research group in this Center has demonstrated that psychological, social and behavioral difference can influence wound healing, particularly the early phases of wound healing. The focus of the research will be on how psychological and behavioral factors affect the migration of immune cells to the wound site and the production of proinflammatory cytokines
known to be important for wound healing. If psychological stress could slow the healing of small wounds, then the healing of larger wounds in minor and major surgery could be affected by stress.

The Center will enhance the already existing training program for
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows that already exist within the research group and the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.

Four independent studies from our research group have now
demonstrated large and reliable relationships between psychological stress and wound healing. We showed that a chronic stressor, caring for a patient with Alzheimer's disease, affected healing of a dermal wound. Similar results were obtained using a mouse model that showed that stress can slow wound healing using an identical dermal wound comparable to the studies with human subjects. A third study has shown that academic stress can slow mucosal wound healing among a group of dental students. We are presently studying the mechanisms of these
interactions in order to understand how stress affects the wound healing process. In a recent study we found that psychological stress inhibited the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines at an actual wound site, in human subjects providing in vivo data on the development of local immune responses important for the early stages of wound repair.

The immune system plays a major role in the regulation of wound repair, and stress can alter the cellular immune response. We have started to explore the mechanism(s) to understand how psychological, social and behavioral differences can influence wound healing by focusing on the early phases of the wound healing process. This focus is on the migration of immune cells to the wound site and the production of proinflammatory cytokines known to be important for wound healing. We believe that links
between distress and immunity have important health consequences. We have shown that psychological stress can slow the healing of small wounds. We believe that this has implications for the healing of larger wounds resulting from minor and major surgery could be affected by stress.

We hope this site provides, at least in part, a look at what we do and what we consider to be extremely vital research. Please contact us with any questions you may have.

Sincerely,

Dr. M. Ronald Glaser, Director

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