Quake3World

Have any of you read up much on glucocorticoids and stress related illness (herpes, shingles)? Just watched an interesting lecture on viruses that use high glucorticoid levels as a signal to come out of latency. Glucocorticoids bind to their receptors and are translocated to the nucleus where they activate viral genes by binding to glucorticoid receptive elements. The herpes virus is loaded with these elements.

Anyhow, the rest of the lecture went on to talk about the biology of stress responses in animals - looking at baboons and mice specifically. Interesting shit - responses to stressful situations including lashing out or causing pain to 'innocent' but weaker observers. At the basic level, their responses are very 'human' in one aspect (it almost sounded like the researcher was describing the responses of young children to stressful situations...)

Interesting shit - I DVR'd it, so I am going to give it a closer look here...

That sounds interesting.

not really familiar with stress mechanisms.

that sounds really interesting though - i wonder how the virus evolved to work in tandem with these hormones.

re stress responses in animals - yea there've been tonnes of studies where two animals are put in a cage (usually a larger one and a smaller one).

If a painful stimulus is administered to the larger one, it just attacks the closest thing in sight.

introspectively you can appreciate this - when you stub your toe, you wanna take that pain out on others, and it's especially easy to do so if someone is mildly provoking you by laughing at your grimaced face.

I thought about the evolutionary mechanism for evolving to exploit a stress response as well...

Going to poke around the web and see what I find in terms of other genes (viral and other) that utilize similar pathways.

I miss my access to a research university's science library.

http://www.aaas.org/ScienceTalk/sapolsky.shtml
That's the professor.

Take a look at his work...crazy looking dude

I've had shingles, but havent read up on diseases or stress disorders. I have been interested in the rearing of mice and the physiological effects of stresses during rearing. I use mice as a model for my research, and have always wondered if mice raised in wild/natural conditions show significant differences in neuronal function than those bread in captivity. It would be a tough thing to assess.

check into that guys work..he discussed some of those issues (impacts of captive breeding vs. wild/natural conditiosn) in the lecture I just watched.

Canis wrote:I've had shingles, but havent read up on diseases or stress disorders. I have been interested in the rearing of mice and the physiological effects of stresses during rearing. I use mice as a model for my research, and have always wondered if mice raised in wild/natural conditions show significant differences in neuronal function than those bread in captivity. It would be a tough thing to assess.

oooooooooh you've got herpies eeeeeeeeeeeewwweee

sapolsky...i know i've heard that name and seen that face before. I think it was in connection with the buddhist/science deal, and looked that up and sure enough it seems he's involved in that sort of research. Not 100% sure though, and still can't remember exactly where i heard of him...

tx for the link - will check it out after exams

I know a little about the hormone receptors, but I don't remember ever hearing about herpesvirus taking advantage of it. Of course, I have some papers about herpes lying around, but I can't find them atm. I'll have to look for them and see if they mention anything about glucocorticoids.
This would be an interesting way to address herpes treatment. Does the virus require glucocorticoids to replicate?

On a side note, what pathways do most anabolic steroids utilize? I wonder if there are any viruses that have a similar sort of mechanism as herpes, that utilize the transcription elements from steroid receptor pathways. That is, something that would increase viral transcription when steroid levels are high...