Researchers at Wake Forest University have found that the hormone epinephrine causes prostate and breast cancer cells to change in a way that makes them more resistant to cell death.
Those changes mean that cancer treatments are less effective in some patients, according to the study.
"These data imply that emotional stress may contribute to the development of cancer and may also reduce the effectiveness of cancer treatments," said George Kulik, D.V.M., Ph.D., an assistant professor of cancer biology and senior researcher on the project, in a statement.
The connection between stress and prostate cancer has not been studied much, Kulik said.
What they found was that a protein that causes cell death becomes inactive when cancer cells are exposed to epinephrine, Kulik said in his statement.
