ITS LONG-TERM STRESSORS THAT TAKE A TOLL - COMMENT ON COHEN ET-AL. (1998)

In an extremely well-controlled study, Cohen et al. (1998) add to prio r knowledge of stress-illness relationships by showing that self-repor ts of stress occurrence and duration of 1 month or more, rather than e stimates of stressor severity, predict susceptibility to experimentall y induced colds (i.e., viral replication and cold symptoms). Although ruling out obvious behavioral and personality factors as causes of the association of stressors to colds, they were unable to identify media tional immune factors, a deficit attributable to the difficulty of ass essing the multi-layered, dynamic physiological processes within the b idirectional connections of the nervous (stress) and immune systems. T he findings provide an interesting complement to data, showing that pe ople use stressor duration in evaluating the illness implications of s omatic symptoms (Cameron et al., 1995), and suggest caution with regar d to overestimating the prevalence of stress-induced colds in natural settings.