Avaliação dos efeitos prejudiciais do estresse sobre o sistema imunológico durante o período da pandemia de Covid- 19: uma revisão integrativa

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted several factors in people's daily lives and promoted changes that led to increased stress. Social isolation, socioeconomic issues, fear of the disease and other factors contributed to alterations in the physiological mechanisms of response to stress with an increase in hormones, such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol. The main objective of this study was to assess the population's immunological impairment associated with stressful conditions in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This bibliographical review is an integrative study, with a qualitative approach, based on a survey of national and international data that present relevance to the theme and proposed objective. Scientific papers published in databases such as Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo), United States National Library of Medicine (PubMed), and Google Scholar were used, using Descriptors in Health Sciences (DeCS). In the study, the relationship of the nervous, immune and endocrine systems was observed, altering mechanisms in the neuroendocrineimmune circuits and causing damage to health through the stressful processes of social isolation. There was an increase in the expression of the proinflammatory gene and a decrease in the expression of the antiviral gene, promoting a greater risk of complications from COVID-19 due to alterations in the transmission of cytokines. Stress and COVID-19 share a similar way of increasing the secretion of IL-6, a cytokine that is associated with death in cases of COVID-19. In healthcare professionals, there were changes in immune cells after being exposed to stressful factors. Based on the results obtained, it was found that stress during the pandemic affected the immune system, changing the response against SARS-CoV-2, increasing viral pathogenesis.