Integrative and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Sickness and Inflammation

While common infectious diseases like influenza or the common cold are generally minor and self-limiting, they nevertheless represent potentially significant personal and social disruptions given their ubiquity. At the level of the sick individual, immune activation in response to infection includes stereotypical behavioral changes – sickness behavior – that are inseparable from inflammatory reactions. Sickness behavior includes increased lethargy and social withdrawal, among other changes, and is thought to be an evolved, adaptive means of shifting energy toward mounting an effective immune response. However, growing evidence indicates that sickness behavior is highly context dependent with potential implications for individual morbidity and pathogen transmission if ignored. Consideration of the biocultural aspects of sickness is essential to improving multiple aspects of personal and social health and is a key component of “social immunology,” a new theoretical approach aimed at understanding the interaction(s) of infectious disease, social networks and institutions, and cultural norms. This approach requires holistic and interdisciplinary work grounded in biological and medical anthropology.