In adult mice, the combination of psychological stress and Coxsackie B-2 virus inoculation is required to produce significant disease manifestations such as weight loss.
In a series of experiments, adult mice subjected to environments previously found to produce differing degrees of stress were inoculated with Coxsackie B-2 virus. Neither “stress” nor the inoculation of Coxsackie virus, acting independently, was sufficient to cause manifest disease, but the combination of stress and the pathogenic agent resulted in a significant loss of body weight.
Friedman et al. (Thu,) studied this question.