eCAM Advance Access published online on December 1, 2004
eCAM, doi:10.1093/ecam/neh048
Copyright © 2004 by the Oxford University Press.
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1 Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, University of California, Los Angeles, Neuropsychiatric Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Both the incidence and severity of herpes zoster (HZ) or shingles increase markedly with increasing age in association with a decline in varicella zoster virus (VZV)-specific immunity. Considerable evidence shows that behavioral stressors, prevalent in older adults, correlate with impairments of cellular immunity. Moreover, the presence of depressive symptoms in older adults is associated with declines in VZV-responder cell frequency (VZV-RCF), an immunological marker of shingles risk. In this review, we discuss recent findings that administration of a relaxation response-based intervention, tai chi chih (TCC), results in improvements in health functioning and immunity to VZV in older adults as compared with a control group. TCC is a slow moving meditation consisting of 20 separate standardized movements which can be readily used in elderly and medically compromised individuals. TCC offers standardized training and practice schedules, lending an important advantage over prior relaxation response-based therapies. Focus on older adults at increased risk for HZ and assay of VZV-specific immunity have implications for understanding the impact of behavioral factors and a behavioral intervention on a clinically relevant end-point and on the response of the immune system to infectious pathogens.
Accepted September 30, 2004
Review
Shingles Immunity and Health Functioning in the Elderly: Tai Chi Chih as a Behavioral Treatment
2 Department of Medicine and Pathology, University of California, San Diego and the San Diego Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego, CA, USA
Michael Irwin, E-mail: mirwin1{at}ucla.edu
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