Cancer

Having a troubled early parent-child relationship together with a severe life event in the past year may potentially be linked to immune responses to the most common skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma (BCC). The study is published in Archives of General Psychiatry.

Background information in the article states that stressful events and resulting negative emotions can trigger a dysfunction in the body's immunity system producing clinically important changes, which impact on BCC, the appearance of the tumor, as well as progression of the disease. Age, childhood sun exposure, a fair skin-type and being male are all risk factors for the first BCC, although the researchers highlight that subsequent tumors cannot reliably related to these risk factors, writing:

"The immune system plays a prominent role in response to BCC tumors because they are immunogenic, unlike many other common cancers that do not show the same responsiveness to the immune system. Psychological stress may play an important role in the tumor environment for this immunogenic tumor and have important implications for subsequent BCC tumors."

Christopher P. Fagundes, Ph.D., from Ohio's State University Medical Center in Columbus and his team evaluated details from 91 patients, 48 men and 43 women aged between 23 to 92 years who all had a previous BCC tumor, such as early parent-child experiences, any recent severe life events, depression and mRNA (messenger RNA) for immune markers that are linked to BCC tumor progression and regression in BCC tumor patients.

Fagundes and his team state:

"Our results show that among BCC patients who experienced a severe stressor in the past year, those who were emotionally maltreated by their mothers or fathers as children were more likely to have poorer immune responses as reflected in lower levels of mRNA for CD25, CD3ε, ICAM-1 and CD68 to their BCC tumors."

The results demonstrated that those with no dramatic life event, i.e. who suffered no emotional maltreatment were not linked to BCC immune responses and neither were depressive symptoms linked to local tumor immune responses.

The researchers concluded: "This is the first study, to our knowledge, to show that troubled early parental experiences, in combination with a severe life event in the past year, predict local immune responses to a BCC tumor. These data complement and expand increasing evidence that the consequences of early parental experiences extend well beyond childhood."