Epidemiologic evidence increasingly has supported the role of biobehavioral risk factors such as social adversity, depression, and stress in cancer progression. This review describes in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies demonstrating relationships between such processes and pathways involved in cancer progression. These include effects on the cellular immune response, angiogenesis, invasion, anoikis, and inflammation. Biobehavioral factors have been shown to contribute to the cross talk between tumor and host cells in the tumor microenvironment, and stress effects on host cells such as macrophages seem to be critical for many pathways involved in tumor progression. Some effects are bidirectional in that tumor-derived inflammation seems to affect central nervous system processes, giving rise to vegetative symptoms and contributing to dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis with downstream effects on inflammatory control. Findings to date are reviewed, and fruitful areas for future research are discussed.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 January 2026.
All research outputs
#6,499,052
of 34,410,315 outputs
Outputs from Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (BSAM)
#921
of 2,913 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#35,699
of 191,825 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (BSAM)
#8
of 19 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,410,315 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 80th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,913 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 22.2. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 191,825 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 19 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 57% of its contemporaries.
