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Stop Bugging Your Brain
Stop Bugging Your Brain
It's common knowledge that viruses, bacteria and parasites can cause mental disorders. The rabies virus, for example, can make people hallucinate. In its advanced stage, untreated Lyme disease, carried by
ticks infected with the Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete, can induce panic attacks, depression, and psychotic symptoms. Syphilis, and STD caused by Treponema pallidum, eventually progresses into severe mental disease, as the bacteria invade the brain and attacks nerve tissue.What's new today is that a growing number of doctors and researchers are linking childhood mental conditions such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to infectious agents. And, alarmingly, their suspects are not mad dogs or STDs but mundane germs, like the strep virus that gives you a sore throat. Back in the late 1980's investigators at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, USA, interviewed and tested hundreds of children whose medical histories showed the sudden onset of obsessive symptoms after strep infection.
These children had developed abrupt personality changes, going from being model student and the teacher's pet, to the worst kid in the class, and many also displayed Tourette's syndrome, ADHD, or separation anxiety. In a 1998 American Journal of Psychiatry article, the study author dubbed the condition PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections).Their conclusions were dismissed by several experts at the time. But last year, researchers at the Universities of Chicago and Washington unearthed results that appeared to support the theory: They found strep infection doubled a child's risk of developing OCD, Tourette's, or tic disorder within 3 months; multiple infections within a year tripled the risk.
The culprit, they suspect, isn't strep itself but the immune reaction some children have to it: Strep antibodies may mistakenly attack the brain instead of the bacteria, a sloppy immune response known as cross-reactivity. The exact process isn't yet understood, but repeated infections seem to increase both the severity and duration of the psychological symptoms - and may cause permanent damage.
For such children who fit a PANDAS diagnosis, researchers discovered medication can have a profound effect. A 3-year study conducted at the University of Rochester Medical Centre showed that giving antibiotics to 12 children immediately after the sudden onset of OCD eliminated their symptoms within a few weeks. The strep - OCD connection remains on controversial territory as a large section of the medical establishment are yet unconvinced by the evidence. Several pieces of the puzzle are missing - gaps that critics claim cast doubt on the entire field of inquiry. Still, the investigation is now being pursued by doctors at some of the most respected research institutions in the United States and elsewhere.
Scientists at Columbia University and Kaiser Permanente,
for example, have been testing blood samples taken from pregnant women in the 1960s - and then following up with their grown children - to find links between exposure to viruses and parasites in the womb and later risk of mental disorders. Like
Influenza: The theory is that in genetically vulnerable people, the virus sets the stage for an immune reaction that triggers schizophrenia. If confirmed, regular flu vaccinations for women planning a family might offer protection.
Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite turns up in cat feces and undercooked meat. If it reaches the brain of a fetus, it leaves cysts that can rupture years later, causing schizophrenia. Luckily, expectant moms only have to avoid litter boxes and rare meat to keep their babies safe.
If these mental-microbe hunters are proven right, they may some day unveil a powerful new tool against psychiatric illness, and the impact could be huge. They can prevent such crippling conditions by the simplest of methods - vaccination.