The Insanity Virus

Discover Magazine ^ | published online November 8, 2010 | Douglas Fox

[Impy]

Schizophrenia could caused by a virus? Intriguing.

[SunkenCiv]

Its other name is “Windows”. ;’)

Thanks MetaThought.

[Clintonfatigued]

You’re welcome! I figured it would interest someone in your profession.

[GOPsterinMA]

I'd have to see some serious, legitimate, concrete data, but I could see it as a potential cause, sure.

Biochemical or biomechanical mechanisms, their interactions and the subsequent effects are intriguing. They do explain a good amount of “what's going wrong” in people.

[LucyT]

From the article:

A simple neurological exam showed Torrey that schizophrenics suffered from more than just mental disturbances. They often had trouble doing standard inebriation tests, like walking a straight line heel to toe. If Torrey simultaneously touched their face and hand while their eyes were closed, they often did not register being touched in two places.

Schizophrenics also showed signs of inflammation in their infection-fighting white blood cells. “If you look at the blood of people with schizophrenia,” Torrey says, “there are too many odd-looking lymphocytes, the kind that you find in mononucleosis.” And when he performed CAT scans on pairs of identical twins with and without the disease—including Steven and David Elmore—he saw that schizophrenics’ brains had less tissue and larger fluid-filled ventricles.

Subsequent studies confirmed those oddities. Many schizophrenics show chronic inflammation and lose brain tissue over time, and these changes correlate with the severity of their symptoms. These things “convinced me that this is a brain disease,” Torrey says, “not a psychological problem.”

[snip]

Torrey wondered if the moment of infection might in fact have occurred during early childhood. If schizophrenia was sparked by a disease that was more common during winter and early spring, that could explain the birth-month effect.

Thanks, S&A.

[kalee]

Thanks for posting this. Our godson, age 23, was just diagnosed.
He had previously been diagnosed with OCD and bi-polar. As the article indicates, it was apparent he was “different” when he was a young child. His mother always said he had quirks. Recently he has begun to complain that he has trolls following him, laughing at him. He doesn’t want to leave the house and has put cardboard over his windows so they can’t see in.
We have another older friend whose son also has it. He has done pretty well with treatment. He is closer to my age. He lives on his own, has a small lawn care service and runs a booth at a flea market on the weekends.
Our godson OTOH is barely functional.

[Slings and Arrows]

You’re very welcome.