try post #164 above and open the link
Interesting, but it's only one reference and is specific to spousal caregivers of people with dementia. This means the people studied are under severe long-term physical as well as emotional stress. They are also likely to be elderly themselves, which is a major confounding factor which limits the application of the results to young and healthy persons.
The conclusion itself is far from definitive,
Conclusions. The data are consistent with previous reports on acute stress and suggest that there may also be a shift from a Th-1 to a Th-2 response associated with a chronic stressor such as caregiving. This shift could have implications for an individual's responses to pathogens.
(my bolding)
Note that this does
not conclude that stress definitely causes
long-term immune dysfunction or
persistent viral or bacterial illness.
In addition, the immune changes described in this abstract are very specific:
Neither stress nor age was significantly related to the percentage or number of IFNγ+/CD-8+, IL-2+/CD-8+ cells, or IFNγ+, IL-2+, CD-4+cells. However, the percentage of IL-10+ cells was higher in lymphocytes obtained from caregivers than control subjects.
This is not, I think, not similar to the immune dysfunctions being found in ME/CFS patients.
I, for one, don't doubt that severe, chronic physical and emotional stress, such as being the primary caregiver for a dementia patient,
could have a negative affect on the immune system. That does not mean that I agree with the
very broad generalization that emotional overload causes a serious long-term neuroimmune illness like ME/CFS. Maybe it's my scientific research background, but I try to be very careful about extrapolating beyond the data given.
If someone told me that they developed CCC- or ICC-defined ME/CFS after years of physical and emotional stress from caring for a dementia patient, I wouldn't argue with them. I agree that there
might be sufficient immune impairment or other consequences of that kind of extreme situation that could result in ME/CFS or related illness. We simply don't know enough about it.
That's a long way, however, from concluding that ordinary life emotional stress
causes ME/CFS.