Welcome to our Monthly Journal Club! Each month I post a paper or two that I have read and find interesting. I use this as a forum for open discussion about the paper in question. Anyone can participate in the journal club, and provide comments/critiques on the paper by leaving a comment below. I picked this month’s paper because it details an enormous and beautiful study examining how the immune system communicates with the brain to promote anxiety. The paper we are discussing is titled “Stress-induced metabolic disorder in peripheral CD4+ T cells leads to anxiety-like behavior” (click the hyperlink to see the paper) by Jin Jin & colleagues at Zhejiang University in China.

We have all experienced stress. Whether it’s from an upcoming exam, a public performance, or the existential dread experienced day-in and day-out for so many people around the world :) . If stress goes unchecked, it can lead to the development of anxiety, where we start to feel stressed in situations that don’t usually call for this kind of response. How does a stressful experience precipitate anxiety? Why do some people develop anxiety under stress, while others seem resistant?

Many studies have demonstrated that chronic stress negatively influences the immune system. However, it is unclear whether these changes causally contribute to the development of anxiety. Additionally, whether immune-related anxiety is driven by the innate or adaptive immune system remains an unexplored area. Jin Jin and colleagues set out to answer these open questions using a mouse model of chronic stress. To produce stress, the authors subjected mice to brief daily electronic foot shocks (5 times for 3 sec per day for 8 days; ES).