Towards unveiling the mystery: From stressed brain/mind to outburst of disease: Editorial overview

摘要

For decades our own intuition and personal experience tell us that our brain and state of mind somehow affect our susceptibility to develop a disease or deal with an exisitng chronic one. We just do not know how exactly thishappens .... In fact, almost all of us witnessed, on ourselves or others thatstress, painful loss, injury or any other traumatic event, which is presumably perceived only by our brain/soul/mind is frequently accompanied by outburst of a disease that was not there, or was silent, before. Yet, fighting or controlling diseases has long been viewed as the task only of the immune system, not that of the nervous system. So what could be the biological secrets linking between these commonly observed phenomena? What is the alchemy of this 'strange' communication between the nervous system and the immune system, a field we call 'Neuroimmunology' or 'Neuroimmu-nomodulation'? Novel observations and realization covered in this issue unveil some exciting answers, and discuss recently appreciatedlinks between different cells types, receptors, ligands, factors and signaling pathways of the nervous system and those of the immune system, allowing these two body systems to easily talk to one other in almost every site of the body, and at any given time.