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SCIENTISTS are gaining new insights into the role of temperament in making some people vulnerable to physical disease through studies exploring how stress influences the immune system, weakening disease-fighting cells and creating fertile environments for pathogens.

This month, a carefully done study showed that shy men have much less resistance to the AIDS virus than extroverted men and benefit far less from treatment with antiretroviral drugs.

It is the first study to demonstrate through laboratory tests a connection between being introverted and the course of AIDS in individuals, researchers said.

Such studies are sketching in the details behind the growing awareness that the workings of the body and mind cannot be neatly compartmentalized into the departments and disciplines taught in medical school.

As a result, paying attention to the emotional state of patients with infectious and chronic diseases is increasingly more than a matter of good bedside manner; it is becoming an essential part of treatment.

Among shy men, the drop was only 20 fold, said lead author Steve Cole at the AIDS Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles. "There is a link between psychological profile and poorer response to HIV, and maybe even a number of other viral diseases," agreed Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the federal government's lead research center in the fight against AIDS.

In shy people, the nervous systems may be more likely to produce a stress reaction during social interactions -- so they maintain their internal stress balance by limiting contact with other people.

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