Chain of Strain?

Doctors have long recognized a medical fact behind the saying that "people make themselves ill" through strain or worry. But it was only in recent years that anyone advanced a coherent theory of why this occurs: applying his "general adaptation syndrome" theory (TIME, Oct. 9, 1950), Montreal's Dr. Hans Selye minutely described how body tissues, adapted to normal stresses, sometimes suffer severe damage because of fatigue, worry or even bad eating habits. Still unanswered was the question of just how individual body cells act under stress. This blind spot stymied the search for remedies.

Last week two University of Utah scientists, Chemist Henry Eyring and Anatomist Thomas F. Dougherty, produced a radical answer.

Their theory: stress sets off a destructive chain reaction among the body cells, with histamine acting as the destructive agent. Each cell is in a membrane envelope, and as long as the membrane is relatively impermeable, the cell functions normally. Under stress, however, the membrane starts to deteriorate. Histamine, which is normally present in a cell but behaves only so long as the cell is healthy, is violently released and stimulated by the cell breakdown. It attacks the disintegrating cell, which swells and bursts, liberating still more histamine to attack neighboring cells. Over long periods of stress, the spreading destruction can lead to serious illness, e.g., if the cell destruction is near the heart, scar tissue will form, eventually causing heart disease. Moreover, the Utah scientists believe, the chain reaction may be a universal killer, present in every fatal illness, including cancer.

Present antihistamine drugs have only a temporary effect against the cell-weakening histamine. Eyring and Dougherty's hope for a cure: a "ground substance" (gelatinous matter surrounding blood capillaries and body cells) that the body uses to block less severe histamine assaults. A stronger, man-made drug like it, they hope, may stop the chain reaction, localize cell damage and bring stress-burdened modern man longer life.

Sure that their sweeping theory will be widely doubted and attacked by colleagues, but equally sure that they are right, Scientists Eyring and Dougherty are already planning the next step: developing the new drug.

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