Funny, I was going to start looking into anxiety and stress and ran across this abstract I had run across and much to my surprise....cytokines were involved!

In reading these abstracts, it become apparent how a lot of this might fit into the auto immune hypothesis in PD...it looks like cytokines can activate the HPA axis and plays a part in the cascade process. The unique part I ran across actually tied it all together by looking at exogenous stress.

I'm linking to a couple key abstracts outlining basics and following with the stress connection. Rick, I wonder if this at all correlates to your ideas on the role of stress in the etiology of PD? Anyway, as usual, I am loosely piecing things together...it is the first time that I have seen the psycho social connection being stress with neurology and immune system.

Rick, have you been following this in your blog? Or maybe there is no "there". Anyway, just wanted to share. I am noticing how big a role anxiety has played in my version of PD- it was the first symptom to show and is apparently alive and kicking given that I started having panic attacks recently.

Exp Biol Med (Maywood). 2004 Nov;229(10):996-1006.
Unraveling the molecular details involved in the intimate link between the immune and neuroendocrine systems.


Viral Immunol. 2005;18(1):41-78.
Immune modulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during viral infection.

Finally, I like how these researchers call our HPA axis our "sixth sense".

Bratisl Lek Listy. 1997 Apr;98(4):187-98.
[Is the immune system our sixth sense? Relation between the immune and neuroendocrine systems].