All Posts Tagged With: "schizophrenia"

Full article: http://www.schres-journal.com/article/S0920-9964(10)00046-0/abstract

Excerpt:

Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) tends to replicate in the temporal cortex and can damage the limbic system. The presence of serum antibodies to HSV-1 is associated with cognitive impairment in adults with schizophrenia, suggesting that cerebral gray matter abnormalities might distinguish patient subgroups defined by HSV-1 exposure. We assessed 43 adult outpatients with schizophrenia. The assessment included clinical interviews, neurocognitive testing, anatomic brain magnetic resonance imaging and measures of serum IgG antibodies specific to herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2. We then compared 25 patients who tested positive for antibodies to HSV-1 with 15 who were seronegative for both HSV-1 and HSV-2. The seropositive patients performed significantly worse than the seronegative patients on four neuropsychological measures of psychomotor speed, executive functioning, and explicit verbal memory. Voxel-based morphometric analyses revealed that the same patients showed reduced gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate and areas of the cerebellum.

New Findings Boost Theory That Infection Causes Schizophrenia

Full article: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/45/6/1.2.full

Excerpt:

A review of studies of maternal exposure to infectious agents and schizophrenia in their offspring suggests that eliminating certain infections could prevent as many as 30 percent of schizophrenia cases.

Call it an instance of science being stranger than science fiction, and of nature’s unintended consequences.

In 2000, a team of British researchers published a remarkable paper in the journal of the Royal Society titled “Fatal Attraction in Rats Affected With Toxoplasma Gondii.” It seems that rodents infected with Toxoplasmosis gondi (T. gondii), a parasite that normally thrives in cats, become fatally attracted to cat urine, causing them to shed their normal avoidant behavior in the presence of a cat.

Naturally, cat catches rodent and devours it, with the result that the parasite T. gondii is again where it belongs: in a feline host.

Observing this case of attraction gone fatally wrong, the researchers, from the University of Oxford, postulated that T. gondii, one of nature’s most successful organisms, had developed an ingenious evolutionary mechanism for manipulating the behavior of the rodent—in whom the parasite would have reached a dead end—so that the rodent seeks out, suicidally, the feline host in which the parasite can thrive and complete its life cycle.

Full article: http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v06n02.shtml

Excerpt:

How To Destroy Confidence In Vitamins When You Do Not Have The Facts

(OMNS, January 11, 2010) “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this year’s annual meeting of the World Headquarters Of Pharmaceutical Politicians, Educators, and Reporters (WHOPPER).

“Let us get right to the point. Many of our members and affiliates have complained about what is, for us, an alarming and dangerous segment of health care: so-called ‘orthomolecular medicine.’ We wish to assure you, although this therapeutic approach is, unfortunately, very effective in preventing and treating disease, that we will make sure the public will never learn of it. We can say this with considerable confidence, since for over 50 years we have managed to keep virtually all psychiatrists from using niacin to treat schizophrenia; we have kept cardiologists from prescribing vitamin E and co enzyme Q10 for heart disease; and we have kept general practitioners from prescribing vitamin C for viral illnesses.

“Yes, it has really been a triumphant half-century. How did we do it? It is really quite easy. Here is a summary for those of you that may have missed the last WHOPPER meeting.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/170934.php

A large new study confirms that people with severe mental disorders - such as schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders - are 25 percent to 40 percent more prone to die from heart disease than people without mental illness are.

Moreover, smoking and physical inactivity - behaviors that individuals potentially can change - significantly contribute to this increased risk of death, found researchers led by Amy Kilbourne, Ph.D. Continued