Stress and humoral immunity: a review of the human studies

Many studies have examined the relationship between stress and immunity, however, only a few have explored associations between stress and humoral immunity. In our review of this literature, three ways of characterizing the response of the humoral immunity system to stress were identified: total immunoglobulins, antibody to latent viruses and antibody to vaccines. These studies provide some support for the hypothesis that stress affects humoral immunity, particularly response to latent virus, but further research is required to confirm these observations. Several directions for future research are proposed.