Take a look at a Toxoplasmosis review on the Stanley foundation website http://www.stanleyresearch.org/dnn/LaboratoryofDevelopmentalNeurovirology/ToxoplasmosisSchizophreniaResearch/tabid/172/Default.aspx

and at this paper http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jpath/2013/965046/

Hi Godfred,

There is a statistical association between prenatal toxoplasmosis infection and later diagnosis of schizophrenia in longitudinal human studies, (2.5 x normal risk);

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/2/200.long

.

There is also a statistical association between maternal influenza infection in early to mid term pregnancy, and schizophrenia in later life, (3 to 7 x normal risk);

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2441883/

.

This has been modelled in mice and rats;

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21289196

.

Schizophrenia is a neuro-developmental disorder as much as a neuro-degenerative disorder. Right now I can't find the study I want to show you, but there is published research demonstrating that if you inject pregnant rats with a drug that interrupts neuro-genesis during the precise period when major dopamine bearing pathways should be growing in the fetus, the offspring will develop behavioural disorders that mirror the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia . It's believed maternal infection with some infectious agents has a similar effect in humans.

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-60327-489-0_13?LI=true

.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pbm/summary/v046/46.3ledgerwood.html

.

there is enough evidence supporting the impact of latent Toxoplasmosis and Psychiatric disorders such as:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23095600

.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23133466

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23225875

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22325983

also this model has been proposed in rodents:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23225872

Fond et al...

>

>

doi: 10.1016/j.encep.2012.06.014.

Hope these links are useful.

Paul.

Thank you so much, you have literally made it evidence based medicine Prof. Paul (with sufficient links).

Hi Godfred,

I'm not actually a professor, or even a "real" doctor.

You can just call me "Paul".

:)

Glad that the links are useful. Have a great day.

Paul.

Dear Paul thank you again :)

Good day.

I don't know if it will interest you:

here is a meta analysis gathering the main pathogens found to be significantly associated with schizophrenia:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22104141

including toxoplasma gondi, herv, and some other pathogens

My answer may be a little off topic but I wonder why research has focused so much on toxoplama gondi and a little less on herv, whereas there is also other pathogens significantly associated with schizophrenia, for instancer chlamidophyla psitacci with an odd ratio about equal to 30.

Can someone help me about this question?

Dear Bourdon HERV and Chlamydial innfections are part of the list of microbes involved in genetic contribution of schizophrenia (SZ) disorder.

However, T. gondii remains to be of foremost interest to many researchers

Further, SZ and bipolar disorder (BD), suggest complex interactions between multiple genetic elements and environmental factors.

The involvement of genetic elements such as Human Endogenous Retroviruses type ‘W’ family (HERV-W) has consistently been associated with SZ.

T. gondii is involved in activating HERV.

Source: Translational Psychiatry (2012) 2, e201

Epidemiological and genome-wide association studies of severe psychiatric disorders such as SZ and bipolar disorder (BD), suggest complex interactions between multiple genetic elements and environmental factors.

T. gondii could induce a targeted activation of HERV-W elements creating a risk for SZ or BD in individuals carrying an HERV-W ‘pathogenic element’.

The emerging concept involving HERVs in human medicine highlights the importance such gene–environment interactions in a number of multifactorial diseases with poorly understood etiology, including cancer.

Several microbes have been proposed as pathogenetic factors in schizophrenia.

However, T. gondii remains to be of foremost interest to many researchers

Previously increased frequencies of chlamydial infections and of human lymphocyte antigen (HLA)-A10 in independent studies of schizophrenia have been observed.

Is there any indication that treating these infectious diseases may improve or even reverse mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia?

I know that minocycline works on treating schizophrenia (it's a recent find) but it has been suggested that minocycline acts by not by acting on a pathogen, but because of reducing inflammation.

My opinion is that one should try for instance co-trimoxazole (bactrim), known to be efficient against toxoplasma gondi and other pathogen, against schizophrenia.

It's not sure to succeed but a positive result to such a study would support infectious theory.

I wonder why it seems to me it hasn't been done before, maybe my idea is wrong?

Thank you for the reply. I found the two studies on the affects of minocycline on schizophrenic patients, but I have not found a study on any other antibiotics yet.

Here are the links:

http://www.schres-journal.com/article/S0920-9964%2814%2900014-0/fulltext

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19895780

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-can-t-i-get-better/201402/antibiotics-found-effective-in-schizophrenia

T. gondii has also been linked to Parkinson's Disease:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20350582

I have found recently a study on certainly other antibiotics working with schizophrenia:

"On the question of infectious aetiologies for multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and the chronic fatigue syndrome and their treatment with antibiotics"

the link is here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19269110

It's some case reports, but it was not told what antibiotics worked against schizophrenia.

There are numerous uses for antibiotics to treat human disease and some do not involve active detectable infections or infective process. The antibiotics are drugs and small molecules and may inhibit enemies or act as agonists and antagonists or through receptors even. Therefore they may have diverse mechanisms of action, which may be unrelated to bacteria or parasites.

I agree that antibiotics have diverse mechanisms of action.

But if lot of antibiotics works against schizophrenia (I mean a more important percent of antibiotics drug than any other kind of drug) and with an important effect, it can be an important element to believe that an infection is related to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

Moreover minocycline has an important and significant effect on some kind of symptoms of schizophrenia, more important on some symptoms that antipsychotics( in fact it's difficult to assess because the result hasn't been got from the same study).

I do still believe that a way of research would be to try other antibiotics than minocycline on schizophrenia.

The problem is that it costs expensive, but If you watch the example of minocycline, if other antibiotics has also an important effect on schizophrenia, the study wouldn't have to require 300 schizophrenics people (as in the minocycline ) but only 100.( a statistical test should be done to asses that)

If you are interested (or anyone else) I can send you a message with a link to my work which contains lot of strange facts related to schizophrenia and infection (from pubmed docs).