If you are feeling itchy, the cause may be stress, you are facing.
Stress may activate immune cells in your skin and cause the familiar yet irritating sensation.
It’s found in a study that
stress can trigger an outbreak in patients suffering from
inflammatory skin conditions.
Researchers lead by Petra Arck of Charité, University of Medicine, Berlin and McMaster University in Canada, hypothesised that
stress could exacerbate skin disease by increasing the number of immune cells in the skin.
The researchers found that skin provides the first level of protection from infection, where white blood cells (WBCs) attack the invading bacteria and viruses. Immune cells in the skin, however, can over-react resulting in inflammatory skin diseases.
This cross talk between the
stress perception, which involves the brain and the skin, is mediated through the “brain-skin connection”. Yet, little is known about the means by which
stress aggravates skin diseases.
The report will appear in the November issue of The American Journal of Pathology.