SOCIAL STRESS RESULTS IN ALTERED GLUCOCORTICOID REGULATION AND SHORTER SURVIVAL IN SIMIAN ACQUIRED-IMMUNE-DEFICIENCY-SYNDROME

From early in the AIDS epidemic, psychosocial stressors have been prop osed as contributors to the variation in disease course. To test this hypothesis, rhesus macaques were assigned to stable or unstable social conditions and were inoculated with the simian immunodeficiency virus . Animals in the unstable condition displayed more agonism and less af filiation, shorter survival, and lower basal concentrations of plasma cortisol compared with stable animals. Early after inoculation, but be fore the emergence of group differences in cortisol levels, animals re ceiving social threats had higher concentrations of simian immunodefic iency virus RNA in plasma, and those engaging in affiliation had lower concentrations. The results indicate that social factors can have a s ignificant impact on the course of immunodeficiency disease. Socially induced changes in pituitary-adrenal hormones may be one mechanism med iating this relationship.