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Please read this message from the HBOT forum regarding mental illness and

immune system:

Utah scientist makes breakthrough in mental illness research

By Stagg

SALT LAKE CITY -- It is heartbreaking to see someone you love suffer from

mental illness. Now a famous Utah scientist says he's made a big

breakthrough in the research to find a cure.

Doctors have traditionally treated mental illness with drugs to alter the

brain's chemistry, but the University of Utah's Nobel Prize-winning

geneticist Dr. Capecchi tried a new approach on a lab mouse. He

treated the animal for the illness the same way you would many other

illnesses -- by treating its immune system.

Capecchi says compulsive behavior doesn't just affect people. In fact, he

had a lab mouse who was suffering from the condition trichotillomania, where

one pulls their own hair out. Scientists say it was the mouse that led to

the ground-breaking discovery as they found a way to cure him.

" There's a direct correlation, in essence, between the immune system and

behavior, " Capecchi says.

He says scientists have known for years that there is a connection between

behavior and the immune system, but they didn't quite understand it. Now he

and his team have discovered it all has to do with a tiny cell called

microglia.

Microglia were believed to be " scavenger cells " that would clean up damage

in the brain, but Capecchi says the cells are much more powerful than they

were letting on.

" What we're saying is microglia are much more sophisticated and are actually

controlling behavior, and they have to do it by interacting the nerve cells

in your brain, " Capecchi says.

They found people and animals afflicted with behavior disorders have

deformed microglia cells. So, instead of treating mental illness the way

doctors traditionally have -- with medication to alter brain chemistry --

they tried a new approach by treating the immune system.

The researchers used a procedure on the mouse that's commonly practiced on

cancer patients -- a bone marrow transplant.

" That cured the disease permanently, " Capecchi says. " All the hair grew

back, all the lesions were healed, and the mouse no longer removes the body

hair. "

Capecchi says this new discovery could lead to cures for mental disorders

from autism to schizophrenia.

" The book is just opened, and so there are many, many possibilities; and

hopefully not only will we pursue it, but also hopefully it will interest

other researchers, other investigators, to pursue similar experiments, "

Capecchi says.

What are... microglia?

Microglia are immune system cells that originate in bone marrow and migrate

from blood to the brain acting as the first and main form of active immune

defense in the central nervous system (CNS) defending the brain and spinal

cord, constantly excavating the CNS and attacking and engulfing infectious

agents.