We have a friend who has believed this viral link to disease for years, interesting to note that she is not alone.
WSJ.com - Researchers Probe for Viral Link to Mental Illness:
Can viruses cause mental illness?
A growing number of studies are testing theories that viruses and other infectious agents may underlie some cases of psychiatric illnesses. The theory is that viruses and bacteria assaulting the immune system could also end up affecting the brain in such disorders as autism, depression and eating disorders.
Once considered marginal, this kind of research is gaining more acceptance in the wider scientific community.
Perhaps the greatest strides in this area of research are those linking obsessive-compulsive disorder and bacterial infections. Susan Swedo, a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, documented the sudden onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette's syndrome in some children who got strep throat. Dr. Swedo, who has numerous studies under way, coined the term PANDAS, or pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections.
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In a new government-funded study, Dr. Brown is looking at brain images of schizophrenic patients from his earlier study. He wants to see if there is a difference between the brains of patients whose mothers were exposed to flu during pregnancy and other schizophrenic patients whose mothers weren't.Another scientist with several studies under way is Ian Lipkin, the Columbia scientist who identified West Nile virus as the cause of encephalitis in victims of a 1999 New York City outbreak. Dr. Lipkin's largest study looking at a link between virus and mental illness is a collaboration between Columbia and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. They are enrolling patients in a study of 100,000 women, partners and babies in Norway for six years to investigate many possible causes of autism spectrum disorders. Viruses are one area of investigation....
The research has given rise to hopes for new treatments. A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline PLC, for example, said that while the company isn't presently researching any applications of these theories, it is monitoring the research, and is particularly interested in inflammatory responses in the brain and the psychiatric consequences.Advocates for the mentally ill hope that the research, by confirming that mental illness has biological roots, will help lessen the stigma still attached to it. The research on viruses, says David Fassler, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, “is having a positive impact on public awareness. But we still have a long way to go.”
