A little stress can do a mouse good, a new cancer study suggests. Matthew During wanted to see whether stressing out mice by messing with their environment would affect the rate of tumor growth. So, for a study that now appears in Cell, he and his team divided up their mice into two groups. Some mice lived quiet, peaceful lives in cages shared between five mouse roommates, while the other group lived in a stressful cluttered cacophony, where the cages held 18 to 20 animals plus numerous distractions and challenges like toys, mazes, and wheels.
Mice were then injected with tumor cells, which led to malignancies in all of the control animals within 15 days... The rate of tumor formation in animals living in the enriched environment was significantly delayed, and 15 percent had not developed tumors after nearly three weeks; when tumors were visible, they were 43 percent smaller ...
