For the 1600 people diagnosed with melanoma in New Zealand every year, stress, including that which comes from hearing their diagnosis, may increase the rate of progression of the most aggressive form of the disease – malignant melanoma.

However a new study published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity from Ohio State University suggests that common blood pressure medicines may slow the tumours’ development, improving patients’ quality of life, reports Science Daily.

The study looked for links between stress hormones and diseases such as cancer, and exposed three melanoma cell lines to norepinephrine, a naturally occurring compound that functions as a stress hormone.

Norepinephrine levels in the bloodstream rise at times of increased stress.

What the researchers found was that in the most aggressive and advanced form of the melanoma, there was a 2,000% increase in one protein, Interleukin-6, where in untreated samples IL-6 is usually undetectable.

“What this tells us is that stress might have a worse effect on melanoma that is in a very aggressive or advanced stage, and that one marker for that might be increased levels of IL-6,” said Eric Yang, a research scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research IBMR), to Science Daily.

The researchers showed that once the norepinephrine molecule binds to receptors on the surface of cancer cells, it stimulates the release of the proteins that support angiogenesis and tumor growth.

Mr Yang and his colleague Ronald Glaser then confirmed that receptors were present in all three cell lines before testing what would happen when the receptors were blocked by common blood pressure medicine – or so-called “beta-blockers.”

They found that when the beta-blockers bound to the receptors, production reduced significantly, indicating that using these types of medications in melanoma patients may slow the progression of the disease.