, 2012, Dantzer et al., 2008, Irwin and Cole, 2011, Kelley et al., 2003 and Miller

et al., 2008). Immune-to-brain communication cascades are thought to undergird cancer and treatment-related symptoms such as fatigue, depression, cognitive dysfunction, and sleep disturbance (Bower et al., 2011, Dantzer et al., 2012, Lutgendorf and Sood, 2011 and Miller et al., 2008). Contemporary PNI remains poised to elucidate the prevalence, impact, and etiologies of cancer-related physical and affective sequelae at different phases of cancer survival (Bower, 2012, Dantzer et al., 2012 and Haroon et al., 2012). Advances in prevention, detection, and treatment (DeVita and Rosenberg, 2012) continue to yield significant declines in SGI-1776 nmr the incidence of most cancers and death rates for all cancers combined (Eheman et

al., 2012 and Siegel et al., 2012b). These trends, combined with overall increases in life expectancy, have created a “booming [aging] cancer survivor population” (p. 1996, Parry et al., 2011). Siegel et al. estimated 13.7 million American cancer survivors were alive in January 20123 (Siegel et al., 2012b). The majority of this emergent demographic had far exceeded the 5-year survival benchmark. Adolescent and young adult (AYA) survivors, diagnosed at ages 15 to 29 years, have an 82% probability of survival 30 years from diagnosis (Mertens et al., 2008). While this statistic is impressive, seminal research by Oeffinger, Lipshultz and others Selleckchem EPZ015666 about document profound adverse long-term health-related outcomes following exposure to highly aggressive curative intent therapies (Lipshultz et al., 2012 and Oeffinger et al., 2006). Most notably relevant to PNI, childhood cancer treatments are associated with late effects on the cardiovascular, central nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. Further, survivors of adult, AYA, and pediatric cancers are at risk for recurrence

and subsequent malignancies. Relative to the US population, survivors experience excess morbidity and mortality due to cardiac and vascular abnormalities and pulmonary complications (Choi et al., 2011, Mariotto et al., 2007, Oeffinger and Tonorezos, 2011, Siegel et al., 2012a and Valdivieso et al., 2012). This landscape highlights an opportunity to use PNI paradigms to understand cancer from a competing risk perspective in which multiple factors concurrently affect risks for morbidity and mortality (Mell et al., 2010 and Schairer et al., 2004). Although not consistently observed (Zucca et al., 2012), age at diagnosis, general life expectancy trends, and long-term physiological sequelae of treatment exposure have converged to increase the prevalence of co-morbidity or multimorbidity4 in a cancer context (Braithwaite et al., 2012, Land et al.