A single social defeat transiently suppresses the anti-viral immune response in mice

Most of the studies dealing with effects of stress on anti-viral immunity have been carried out with stressors that are of long duration and that bear little relationship to the nature of the species. In this paper, we investigated the effect of a stressor mimicking real-life situations more closely, being social defeat of male mice, on anti-viral immunity. A single social defeat was applied at 3 or 6 days after inoculation with pseudorabies virus, a herpes virus. It appeared that lymph node cellularity, virus specific IL-2 and IFN-gamma production and lymphocyte proliferation were suppressed at 1 day after defeat, but these parameters restored to control values quickly thereafter. We conclude that the stress of a single social defeat evokes a transient immune suppression, which might have consequences if a pathogenic or lethal virus is involved.