““By enlisting the assistance of a team of neuroimmunologists, however, Schaller succeeded in conducting one of the few studies to address the question. As in many of his previous trials, subjects were shown a disease-y slide show, but with one major difference: Immediately before and after the presentation, their blood was drawn and mixed in a test tube with a pathogen surface marker to determine how aggressively their white blood cells countered the challenger. Specifically, the investigators looked to see if arousing subjects’ disgust spurred their white blood cells to produce higher amounts of a pathogen-fighting substance called interleukin 6 (IL-6). It did—and by a whopping 24 percent.””
