Researchers identify new link between stress and cancer

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Stress hormone may speed up the growth and spread of cancer cells.
It has long been believed that stress and cancer could be linked, although there has been little hard scientific evidence of this. Now researchers at Ohio State University report on experiments that show how the stress hormone norepinephrine can affect cancer cells.

They find that exposure to norepinephrine, which is released in response to stressors, can induce cancer cells to release molecules that can help them spread and also start off the growth of new blood vessels that can feed a tumor. Beta-blockers, which are drugs that inhibit the release of norepinephrine, were found to reduce the production of these molecules. So this suggests an entirely new approach to cancer treatment, where blocking stress hormones would stop the spread of a tumor as well as cutting off its blood supply.

Source
Cancer Research November 2006