Reposts of research - infections and brain function

[Guest guest]

Shoot. It looks like all the posts I stored on

autoimmunity, cytokins, and their effects causing

depression were all last when my hard drive crashed a

couple of years back. But here's one that is

interesting that you guys might like to read again:

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>> Diseases of the Mind

>>

>> Bacteria, viruses and parasites may cause mental

illnesses like depression>> and perhaps even autism

and anorexia

>> http://www.msnbc.com/news/997153.asp

>> By Janet Ginsburg

>> NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL

>>

>> Dec. 1 issue - Olga Skipko has had the good fortune

to live most of her adult life in the Polish village

of Gruszki, in the heart of the Puszcza Bialowieska,

one of Europe's most beautiful forests and home to

wolves, lynxes and the endangered European bison.

Unfortunately, the forest is also a breeding ground

for disease-carrying ticks. Skipko, 49, thinks she was

bitten about 10 years ago, when she began having the

classic symptoms of Lyme borreliosis, a tickborne

nervous-system disease: headaches and aching joints.

She didn't get treatment until 1998. " I was treated

with antibiotics and felt a bit better, " she says.

THAT WAS only the beginning of her troubles. A few

years later, she

began to forget things and her speaking grew labored.

It got so bad that she had to quit her job in a

nursery forest and check herself in to a psychiatric

clinic. " I hope they will help me, " she says. " I

promised my children that when I come back home, I

will be able to do my favorite crosswords again. "

Doctors ran a battery of tests and concluded that her

mental problems were the advanced stage of the Lyme

disease she had contracted years ago.

Scientists have long known that some diseases can

cause behavioral problems. When penicillin was first

used to treat syphilis, thousands of cured

schizophrenics were released from mental asylums. Now,

however, scientists have evidence that infections may

play a far bigger role in mental illness than

previously thought. They've linked cases of

obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and

schizophrenia to a variety of infectious agents, and

they're investigating autism, Tourette's and anorexia

as well. They're beginning to suspect that bad bugs

may cause a great many other mental disorders, too.

" The irony is that people talked about syphilis as the

'great imitator', " says University of Louisville

biologist Ewald, " but it may be the 'great

illustrator'-a model for understanding the causes of

chronic diseases. "

Mental illnesses constitute a large and growing

portion of the world's health problems. According to

the World Health Organization, depression is one of

the most debilitating of diseases, on a par with

paraplegia. Psychiatric illnesses make up more than 10

percent of the world's " disease burden " (a measure of

how debilitating a disease is), and are expected to

increase to 15 percent by 2020. Much of this may be

the work of viruses, bacteria and parasites.

Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, of the Stanley Medical

Research Institute in land, has found from

studying historical asylum records that hot

spots-higher-than-normal incidences-of mental illness

can shift, much like infectious-disease outbreaks,

which lends credence to the notion that infectious

agents play a big role. " Mental disorders are the

major chronic recurrent disorders of youth in all

developed countries, " says Harvard policy expert

Kessler, who directs the WHO's mental-health

surveys.

Perhaps the most well known disease that's been

linked to mental disorders is Lyme disease, which is

caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi germ. First

identified in the mid-1970s among children near Lyme,

Connecticut, the disease has long been known to cause

nervous-system problems and achy joints if left

untreated. Now scientists are finding that Lyme

disease can also trigger a whole smorgasbord of

psychiatric symptoms, including depression. One New

York man (we'll call him Joe) found out firsthand how

debilitating the disease can be. When he began having

bouts of major depression back in 1992, he had

forgotten all about the tick bite he had gotten four

years earlier. He spent two years in a blur of

antipsychotic drugs, mental institutions, jails and

suicide attempts. On a hunch, a doctor at a

psychiatric hospital in New Jersey had Joe tested for

Lyme disease. After an intensive course of

antibiotics, Joe's improvement was dramatic and

immediate. " I started to have this fog lift, " he

recalls. Still, he will probably have to be on

psychotropic drugs for the rest of his life.

Some psychiatrists fret that there may be

thousands of people suffering from Lyme-induced

depression without knowing why. Not only is Lyme

disease tricky to diagnose-not everybody gets the

circular rash, and lab tests still aren't wholly

reliable-it can take a decade or more for mental

disorders to set in. The U.S. Centers for Disease

Control says that nine out of 10 cases of Lyme

diseases remain unreported. There are 15 species of

borellias-making them the most common tickborne

disease-producing bacteria in the world.

For its part, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii,

which can be found in undercooked meat and cat feces,

can lead to full-blown psychotic episodes. Some

studies suggest that the parasite stimulates the

production of a chemical similar to LSD, producing

hallucinations and psychosis. Even when the parasite

lies dormant in muscle and brain tissue, it can affect

attention span and reaction time in otherwise healthy

people. Researchers at University in Prague

have discovered that people who test positive have

slightly slower-than-average reaction times

and-possibly as a result-are almost three times as

likely to have car accidents. That's a disturbing

prospect, considering that the disease is so

widespread: billions of people are thought to be

infected.

Even a simple sore throat can lead to

psychiatric problems. Few

>> children avoid coming down with a streptococcus

infection, also known as

>> strep. Scientists now think that one in 1,000 strep

sufferers also develops

>> abrupt-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in

a matter of weeks. Strep

>> bacteria trigger OCD by igniting an overzealous

response from the immune

>> system, which attacks certain types of brain cells,

causing inflammation.

>> Symptoms generally die down after a few months but

can flare up again,

>> especially if there's another bout of strep, says

Swedo, a

>> childhood-disease expert at the National Institutes

of Health. The most

>> effective treatment, still experimental, is to

filter out the misbehaving

>> antibodies from the blood. Best is to treat strep

early on.

>> The specter of a depression germ or

contagious obsessive-compulsive

>> disorder is unnerving, but it also opens up many

more treatment

>> options-antibiotics, vaccines, checking for ticks.

Geneticists believe that

>> diseases may trigger the onset of inherited mental

illnesses by activating

>> key genes. Avoiding and treating infection may be

just as important as the

>> genes you inherit, and a whole lot easier to do

something about.

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