Craziness and Poop

My subscription to Psychiatric Times always has something interesting associated with it. Bottom line: the stereotype of the crazy, isolated cat lady may be dead-on true.

Environmental Factors in Schizophrenia Three epidemiological studies bolster the evidence for infectious and social influences on the development of schizophrenia. Swedish national registers show an association between psychotic illness and childhood viral, but not bacterial, infections of the central nervous system (CNS). Dalman et al. (p. 59) analyzed hospitalizations for CNS infections before age 13 and psychotic illnesses from age 14 onward in children born during 1973–1985. Psychosis risk was almost tripled by childhood mumps exposure and was over 16 times as high after cytomegalovirus exposure. Using blood samples collected routinely by the U.S. military, Niebuhr et al. (p. 99) confirmed a relationship between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis. IgG antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii were compared in service members medically discharged with schizophrenia between 1992 and 2001 and matched healthy subjects. The antibody level was nearly 25% higher for the subjects with schizophrenia in the 6 months preceding the diagnosis or after it. Dr. Alan Brown examines these two studies in an editorial on p. 7. Veling et al. (p. 66) identified social isolation as a risk factor for psychotic disorders among immigrants in The Hague. City records provided the ethnic backgrounds and locations of residents who received a first diagnosis of psychotic disorder over 7 years. Immigrants in neighborhoods with high densities of immigrants from the same country had a rate of psychotic illness similar to that of native Dutch residents, but those in neighborhoods with low densities of the same ethnic group had a rate more than double that for the Dutch.