Are you familiar with the flu hypothesis of Schizophrenia (work by Sarnoff Mednick)? In short, some longitudinal studies starting with one that followed a Danish birth cohort in the 1950s showed that 2nd trimester flu infection increased the risk of schizophrenia significantly. As far as I know, the mechanisms is due to interruption of the neuronal migration during the 2nd trimester. I may be wrong here. But there are 2 camps on this – one focused on the flu virus as the culprit and the other focus on the antibodies we produce as the culprit. A student today asked me about the flu shot – even if it contains dead/weakened virus, the flu vaccine inoculates us by getting the body to produce antibodies. So, if the mechanism of schizophrenia genesis is through antibodies, wouldn’t we expect those who got the vaccine also be at higher risk? Any thoughts?
Please see our recent work on this topic on PUBMED:Kneeland and fatemi,fatemi and folsom and review by Urs Meyer.
Dr. Fatemi: I saw the abstract of your 2 recent articles of this topic. Would you be willing to forward me the PDFs? The specific references are:
Viral infection, inflammation and schizophrenia
Rachel E. Kneelanda & S. Hossein Fatemia
The viral theory of schizophrenia revisited: Abnormal placental gene expression and structural changes with lack of evidence for H1N1 viral presence in placentae of infected mice or brains of exposed offspring
S. Hossein Fatemia, b, c, Corresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author, Timothy D. Folsoma, E-mail the corresponding author, Robert J. Rooneyd, E-mail the corresponding author, Susumu Morie, E-mail the corresponding author, Tess E. Kornfieldc, E-mail the corresponding author, Teri J. Reutimana, E-mail the corresponding author, Rachel E. Kneelanda, E-mail the corresponding author, Stephanie B. Liescha, E-mail the corresponding author, Kegang Huae, E-mail the corresponding author, John Hsue, E-mail the corresponding author, Divyen H. Pateld, E-mail the corresponding author
With all the reservationss, but I think that despite some evidence suggesting an association between incidence of various mental illnesses or even with several markers of viral infection and some molecular abnormalities in the CNS, the cause-effect relationship between flu infection and schizophrenia is still far from proven.
Pl read
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530294/
and
http://www.ijmr.org.in/temp/IndianJMedRes1321108-3752357_102523.pdf
The original hypothesis was that influenza infection in pregnant women increased risk for schizophrenia in their offspring, so even if true, vaccination in adults should not have any effect. However, despite yielding a substantial literature, the evidence for this effect is mixed at best and critically, most large epidemiological studies have found little or no relation between influenza infection in mothers and and increased risk for schizophrenia in their offspring.
Hi Terry, if it was administered whilst a woman was pregnant, that could be a possibility. Personally I do not think that maternal infection produces a unique risk for schizophrenia, rather it is the activation of the HPA axis which leads to increased risk (as evidence by a large literature on other developmental insults). In general large levels of immune reaction would be disadvantageous in any pregnancy in regards to foetal growth and development.
I think most of the available evidence refers to the neurodevelopmental aspects of schizophrenia. Have a look at this functional study, for example:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0051068
This would also speak more for a direct effect of the virus on developing neurons, rather than an antibody effect.
I am not aware of any strong evidence supporting an increase of risk in adult people getting infected or vaccinated. But we are talking about a modest increase of odds ratios anyway, certainly not a direct causal relationship.
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