Exploring The Link Between Infection And Mental Illness

The latest research into the link between germs and mental illness -- and what we all need to know. 

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In the early 20th century, if you displayed symptoms of mental illness a doctor might have searched you for signs of infection, and then removed the teeth, tonsils or other body part that was the suspected culprit. Treatment has evolved a great deal since then, but the idea that infection could play a significant role in some mental illness is making a comeback. A number of experts say ten to fifteen percent of conditions – from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder – could be caused by infection. But many others warn too much remains unknown to dramatically change our thinking about treatment. We explore the link between germs and our mental health.

Guests

• Dr. Robert Yolken director, Stanley Laboratory of Developmental Neurovirology; professor of pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• Harriet Washington medical ethicist and writer; author of the new book "Infectious Madness: The Surprising Science of How We 'Catch' Mental Illness", and of 2007's "Medical Apartheid", winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Shearing fellow at the University of Nevada's Black Mountain Institute; former Research Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School
• Dr. James Giordano Professor of Neurology; Chief, Neuroethics Studies Program at Georgetown University Medical Center

Read full transcript and/or Listen to the show:

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-11-24/exploring-the-link-between-infection-and-mental-illness

Lyme disease increase predicted by acorn boom

In New York's Hudson Valley, it's hard to go outside without stepping on an acorn. Oaks have 'boom and bust' acorn production cycles. In lean years, trees produce a handful of nuts. In boom years, acorns seem to rain down from the sky. We are currently experiencing an acorn bumper-crop, or what ecologists call a 'mast' year.

In some forests, there can be more than 100 acorns per square meter. This is welcome news to animals like mice, chipmunks, and squirrels. They can gorge on the bounty and stock their larders. Acorn caches help wildlife avoid predators and survive the lean months of winter. They even give well-fed rodents a jump-start on the breeding season.

For this reason, acorn "mast" years are also harbingers of future Lyme disease risk. In the summer following acorn booms, white-footed mouse numbers explode. In New York's Hudson Valley, these mice play a major role in infecting blacklegged ticks with the agents that cause Lyme disease, Babesiosis, and Anaplasmosis.

Cary Institute disease ecologist Rick Ostfeld explains.

"The ticks that are emerging as larvae in August – just as the mice and chipmunks are reaching their population peaks – they have tons of excellent hosts to feed from. They survive well and they get infected with tick-borne pathogens. And that means that two years following a good acorn crop we see high abundance of infected ticks, which represents a risk of human exposure to tick borne disease."

Predictions are based on 20 years of field studies that have confirmed the relationship among acorn mast years, mouse outbreaks, and the prevalence of infected ticks. Mark your calendars – 2017 will likely be a bad year for Lyme disease.

"Earth Wise" is heard on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is supported by the Cary Institute.

Dangerous Antibiotic-Resistance Gene Identified in China

NEJM Journal Watch 

http://www.jwatch.org/fw110874/2015/11/18/dangerous-antibiotic-resistance-gene-identified-china?query=pfwRS&jwd=000013533191&jspc=
Medical News | 

Physician's First Watch

November 18, 2015

Dangerous Antibiotic-Resistance Gene Identified in China — Implications "Enormous"

By Joe Elia

Edited by Susan Sadoughi, MD, and Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, FACP, FASAM

Polymyxin resistance, possibly caused by extensive use of colistin in meat production, has emerged in China, according to a study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The resistance factor, called MCR-1, is carried on a plasmid (a small, extrachromosomal piece of DNA in bacteria) and could be transferred between strains of E. coli. It has also occurred in other enterobacteria, including Klebsiella and Pseudomonas.

Samples of meat sold at retail in China showed an increased prevalence of the factor between 2011 and 2014. Sixteen hospitalized people also tested positive for MCR-1.

Commentators say that "the implications of this finding are enormous," warning that MCR-1 "will seriously limit the lifespan of the polymyxins as the backbone of regimens against multiply resistant Gram-negative bacilli."

Link(s):

Lancet Infectious Diseases article (Free abstract)

Lancet Infectious Diseases comment (Subscription required)

Background: NEJM Journal Watch Infectious Diseases coverage of increasing colistin use (Your NEJM Journal Watch registration required)

- See more at: http://www.jwatch.org/fw110874/2015/11/18/dangerous-antibiotic-resistance-gene-identified-china?query=pfwRS&jwd=000013533191&jspc=#sthash.fUlrnXWt.dpuf

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099%2815%2900424-7/abstract

"Emergence of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance mechanism MCR-1 in animals and human beings in China: a microbiological and molecular biological study"

Scientific evidence for persistence of Lyme bacteria

The list of scientific references from ILADS, with information provided by Dr. Bransfield, is actually 5 separate lists. 

The first list (general) is very long. Farther down are separate lists: Another long one on psychiatric topics, and toward the bottom of the file, lists on AD, autism, and congenital transmission.  

Thanks to MMI (Microbes and Mental Illness) for having posted these lists, and to Dr. Bransfield for his dedicated work on them. 

http://www.ilads.org/ilads_news/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/EvidenceofPersistence-V2.pdf

New movie about the Lyme controversy

This is a recent video by Randy Sykes about the Lyme controversy:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow53uy1qElI

 

Fossilized tick found in amber indicates Lyme disease is older than human race

Tick larvae encased in a 15- to 20-million-year-old piece of amber contains oldest known ancestor of Borrelia burgdorferi.

Mar 09, 2015

Veterinary professionals are no strangers to the stealthy spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi—but the discovery of spirochete-like cells in a 15-million-year-old amber-encased tick reveals that the bacteria have been lurking around long before humans walked the Earth.

The discovery was made by George Poinar Jr., a paleoentomologist, parasitologist and one of the world's leading experts on plant and animal life forms found preserved in amber. In fact, you may remember the amber-encased mosquito in the plot of the wildly popular Michael Crichton novel and movie Jurassic Park. Poinar's early research is said to have inspired the story.

Read the whole story:

http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/fossilized-tick-indicates-lyme-disease-older-human-race

Your data can help find a cure for Lyme

Invites You To Participate in MyLymeData MyLymeData is a patient-powered research project. It was conceived by patients, is run by patients, and addresses the issues that patients care about. It lets Lyme disease patients learn from each other and provides data that can help drive research to improve their lives. Together we can find a cure for Lyme disease! VISIT US AT LYMEDISEASE.ORG/MYLYMEDATA Email: mylymedata@lymedisease.org Help us spread the word about MyLymeData Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Forward email LymeDisease.org | PO Box 1352 | Chico | CA | 95927

Malaria code cracked?

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34808267

[Scientists] say it is down to protein molecules called cyclins that cause cells to divide rapidly in the malaria parasite. Since Malaria and Babesiosis have common traits, I post this article. Both are treated with the same meds, typically: Mepron and Malarone.

http://mail.mentalhealthandillness.com/mailman/listinfo/mmi_mentalhealthandillness.com

Is Alzheimer’s Disease Infectious?

AIMS Neuroscience, Volume 2 (4): 240–258. DOI: 10.3934/Neuroscience.2015.4.240 Received date 31 July 2015, Accepted date 4 November 2015, Published date 11 November 2015

Abstract: Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been recently considered as a possible brain infection related to the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) transmissible dementia model. As with CJD, there is controversy whether the infectious agent is an amyloid protein (prion theory) or a bacterium. In this review, we show that the prion theory lacks credibility because spiroplasma, a tiny wall-less bacterium, is clearly involved in the pathogenesis of CJD and the prion amyloid can be separated from infectivity. In addition to prion amyloid deposits, the transmissible agent of CJD is associated with amyloids (A-β, Tau, and α-synuclein) characteristic of other neurodegenerative diseases including AD and Parkinsonism. Reports of spiroplasma inducing formation of α-synuclein in tissue culture and Borrelia spirochetes inducing formation of A-β and Tau in tissue culture suggests that bacteria may have a role in the pathogenesis of the neurodegenerative diseases.

literature review on persistence

Here is a literature review on persistence of Lyme bacteria post antibiotic therapy. 

Review of evidence for immune evasion and persistent infection in Lyme disease. - PubMed - NCBI

				Review of evidence for immune evasion and persistent inf... Int J Gen Med. 2013 Apr 23;6:291-306. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S44114. Print 2013.

PANS - A case for antibiotic therapy?

A PANS Case Study, Immune Treatment Reduced Psychiatric Symptoms

(Robert M. Post)

 

http://bipolarnews.org/?p=3446#more-3446

 

"Pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome (PANS) is a little-known syndrome in which a child has an acute onset of psychiatric symptoms following a bacterial or viral infection, when the antibodies generated to fight the infection instead attack neurons in the brain. The behavioral alterations can be severe and resistant to the usual psychotropic drug treatments. PANS often requires antibiotics and immune-targeted therapies."

 

"Mycoplasma pneumonia, influenza, Epstein Barr virus, and Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease) are often involved."

 

 

Ultimate cause of Alzheimer's may be fungal, cadaver study suggests

Ultimate cause of Alzheimer's may be fungal, cadaver study suggests.

The Economist (10/23/15) reports that a study published online Oct. 15 in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that "the ultimate cause of Alzheimer's is fungal." Researchers arrived at this conclusion after examining "brain tissue from 25 cadavers, 14 of which belonged to people who had had Alzheimer's disease when alive." The study authors now "think a clinical trial of anti-fungal drugs is the next logical step."
 

Robert C Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA

Alzheimer's patients have high levels of ceramides, lipid rafts comprised of very long chain fatty acids.
Mattson published this initially in an NIH study in 2004  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC357053/ and
  again in 2010  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907186/ 
Alzheimer's does not originate in the brain as once thought, it is a peroxisomal disorder induced by toxic insult turning on cytokines and
 disabling / inhibiting the ability to beta oxidize (burn) very long chain fatty acids.
Spirochetes feed on very long chain fatty acids, in fact, lyme cannot survive without very long chain fatty acid food source
  because they cannot form them.  The base of the flagellum consists of these very long chain fatty acids.  The flagellum
 swings like a wrecking ball (Edward Kane, age 90, description of the phenomenon) and is nonfunctional without these
 specialized very long chain fatty acids it feeds on from its host.
Toxic mold exposure results in  DNA adducts (epigenetic) insult, cytokine expression, major inhibition of beta oxidation, and a sharp rise in 
   very long chain fatty acids.
Its not just in Alzheimers...also psychiatric disorders, metabolic abnormalities, Autism, Parkinson's, ALS, MS, Post Stroke, NeuroLyme, CFS....

Explains also why they do so well with phenylbutyrate. potent anti-fungal.

Easy to treat.  Who paid attention to my previous writings....

Dr. Patricia Kane, PhD, Director
NeuroLipid Research Foundation

BBC News: The woman who can smell Parkinson's disease

The woman who can smell Parkinson's disease

Meet the woman from Perth whose super sense of smell could change the way Parkinson's disease is diagnosed.

Some background on cardamom -- A very beneficial spice

Cancer Prevention

Cardamom contains IC3 (indole-3-carbinol) and DIM(diindolylmethane). These phytochemicals are well-known cancer fighters, helping to specifically ward off hormone-responding cancers like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and prostate cancer. Early research suggests that consuming cardamom regularly may help with preventing these forms of cancer.

In addition to these specific medicinal uses, cardamom contains an abundance of antioxidants, which protect the body against aging and stress, and fight common sicknesses and bodily strife. In rat studies, cardamom has been shown to increase glutathione, an antioxidant enzyme found naturally in our bodies.

Cardamom volatile oil has only recently come under the scrutiny of scientists curious about its therapeutic properties, but Asian and Indian cultures have reliably used it for ages as a remedy for discomfort and depression, and still rely upon it today. It is now being discovered to have amazing health benefits, and early science confirms its medicinal effectiveness.

Health benefits of cardamom

• This exotic spice contains many plants derived chemical compounds that are known to have been anti-oxidant, disease preventing and health promoting properties.

A proven link between Parkinson's Disease and gut bacteria

A proven link between Parkinson's Disease and gut bacteria

Case Adams
Greenmedinfo.com
Tue, 27 Oct 2015 15:33 UTC

The gut and the brain are pretty far apart, but increasingly scientists are connecting the dots and finding that Parkinson's is truly related to gut bacteria.

Certainly Parkinson's disease is a brain condition, right? A neurological condition, yes? What's that got to do with the gut, you ask?

Can a Cancer Drug Reverse Parkinson's and Dementia?

National Public Radio
Can a Cancer Drug Reverse Parkinson's Disease and Dementia? 
OCTOBER 17, 2015 2:18 PM ET

http://wamc.org/post/can-cancer-drug-reverse-parkinsons-disease-and-dementia#stream/0