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seattletimes.com: Doctors might soon ask, " What's your sign? "

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> Doctors might soon ask, " What's your sign? "

> Full story:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002011657_birthmonth21.html

>

> By Niedowski

> The Baltimore Sun

>

>

>

>

>

> Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20): Governed by Neptune and symbolized by the

fish. Compassionate, introspective, artistic. Often dreamy and impractical.

May be prone to schizophrenia, epilepsy or bipolar disorder.

>

> It may sound like some kind of new, madcap astrology, but several

scientists are becoming convinced that our birth month may predispose us to

particular diseases.

>

> Studies have shown that schizophrenia is more common among those born in

late winter or early spring. Multiple sclerosis is associated with births in

April, May and June. And epilepsy occurs more frequently in those with

birthdays from December to March.

>

> The findings may seem whimsical or depending on which month you

eat cake and unwrap presents alarming. But researchers hope the

emerging patterns will offer clues into the origins of a variety of

illnesses that, despite advances in treatment, have no known cause.

>

> " It makes you think differently about disease, " said Dr. Emmanuel Mignot,

professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University

School of Medicine, who has studied the association between birth month and

narcolepsy.

>

> " Most people tend to think that disease is really something that is

determined by your genes or what happens just before the disease occurs, " he

said. " Maybe there are a number of things that can happen well before. "

>

> In the latest study, published in the current edition of the journal

Neurology, scientists at the National Cancer Institute found that adults

born in January and February had the highest risk of brain cancer. Those

with birthdays in July and August had the lowest risk.

>

> The paper's lead author, NCI epidemiologist Alina Brenner, is the first

to offer a caveat: The findings could be the result of chance.

>

> But separate studies in Britain and Norway have identified a similar

correlation between birth season and risk of brain tumors in children, with

a statistical " excess " of births in winter and a " deficit " in summer.

>

> If the association turns out to be real, Brenner said, it suggests that

exposures early in a child's development at any point from conception

to the first few months after birth could have a hand in the genesis

of the disease. Although it's not clear what those exposures are, they could

include viruses, environmental toxins or even something as seemingly benign

as the weather.

>

> Seasonal birth patterns have been most firmly established in

schizophrenia patients. Danish researchers reported several years ago that

the risk of developing the disorder was highest among those born in February

and March and lowest among those with birthdays in August and September.

>

> For his part, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, research psychiatrist at the

Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., has ruled

out the possibility that chance alone explains the findings.

>

> " It could be chance if it were one study of 250 people, or a few dozen

people here or a few dozen people there, " he said. " When you're dealing with

a couple hundred thousand people and 200 studies, the chances of it being

chance are zero-point-zero. It's remarkably consistent. "

>

> The leading explanation implicates a seasonal infection that could be

disturbing the child's normal brain development, which may help explain why

other central-nervous-system disorders also are more common in those with

winter births.

>

> " We know that infectious agents have a seasonality influenza being

the most striking, " Torrey said. " Therefore, you certainly have to think of

infectious agents infecting the mother late in pregnancy or infecting the

newborn in the first few months of life. "

>

> Stanford's Mignot and a group of colleagues from France published a paper

in the journal Sleep last year linking birth month with another disorder:

narcolepsy. Patients with that condition are regularly seized with sleep

during waking hours.

>

> Researchers compared the birth dates of 886 narcoleptics being treated at

sleep clinics in Montpellier, France; Montreal, and California to those of

more than 35 million people in the general population.

>

> The distribution of births was strikingly uneven, with the number of

narcoleptics born in March (11.9 percent) significantly exceeding the number

expected in the general population (8.5 percent).

>

> Conversely, researchers found a significant drop in the number of

narcoleptics born in September (5.6 percent) compared with the number

normally expected (8.7 percent).

>

>

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