Housing environmental and design attributes and psychoneuroimmunology profiles – a systematic review

Background Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) indicators, with the central role in low-grade systemic inflammation, are associated with major psychiatric disorders and late effects post-cancer treatment. Immune disturbances might mediate the effects of environmental determinants on the behaviour and mental disorders. Therefore, our primary objective is to evaluate whether the exposure to household environmental attributes can trigger PNI biomarker level changes, and to what extent a set of architecture parameters influence on the spatial dynamics of environmental variables. Methods A restricted systematic review is employed to generate knowledge synthesis about housing and mental recovery for the COVID-19 context in a resource-efficient manner. This review is conducted in accordance with the Cochrane Handbook guideline and PRISMA statement. We searched in Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, Scopus, the Cochrane Library and Google Scholar. Included studies need to be peer-reviewed, written in English and meet pre-defined eligibility criteria. Observational or intervention studies investigating the effects of either environmental determinants within home environments -air pollution, thermal comfort, lighting, electromagnetic fields, noise and nature- using objective metrics or housing design, or combination with a set of circulating biomarkers in PNI and correlate gut microbiome composition are included. Quantitative measures of mental morbidities common in the cancer survivorship are included as secondary outcomes. Study eligibility and quality assessments are carried out by one team member and verified by a second reviewer. A descriptive analysis is conducted. To the best of our knowledge, this review is the first to systematically explore and integrate the evidence available on the association multifactorial and dynamic of housing environmental and design attributes with immune and microbiome mechanisms. Key messages Disease surrogate markers based on systems biology and PNI approaches may help understand multi-level and multi-directional interactions among neuroimmune-microbiota function and housing exposure. This timely study contributes to understand if household environmental and architecture parameters might facilitate cancer rehabilitation via home design, restoring mental-physiological functions.