OSU -- A new study here shows that even slight stress and anxiety can substantially worsen a person’s allergic reaction to some routine allergens. Moreover, the added impact of stress and anxiety seem to linger, causing the second day of a stressed person’s allergy attack to be much worse.The finding, the latest in more than three decades of study on stress and immunity, is important since allergic reactions are the fifth-most-common chronic disease in America, and medical costs to treat them can reach $3.4 billion each year. In a report presented today (8/14) at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Boston, Ohio State University researchers described recent experiments meant to gauge how psychological stress might affect allergy sufferers.
