Decades of research have established that chronic stress—from money worries, job problems, family tensions, or other sources—causes chemical changes in the body. In a new study, researchers have identified biological changes induced by stress that may help explain how it could cause a tumor to spread, or metastasize.
To conduct the study, the researchers used two established methods for modeling stress in mice. One is designed to mimic exposure to constant, low-level, predictable stress. The other simulates intermittent, unpredictable, mild stress.
They used these methods to induce chronic stress in two different mouse models of breast cancer. In both models, when the mice were exposed to stress using either method, they had both larger mammary tumors and more lung metastases than mice not exposed to stress.
But a series of follow-up experiments strongly suggested that this increased tumor growth and metastasis wasn’t being driven by the effects of stress on cancer cells themselves.
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