Inflammation,
The immune System, the Endocrine system & Mental Health
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"University of Cambridge Professor Edward Bullmore reveals the breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain. He explains how and why we now know that mental disorders can have their root cause in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression."
International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health (2018)
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 BBC Health & Science Correspondent James Gallagher
BBC health reporter James Gallagher explores the increasing body of evidence that a dysfunctional immune system is responsible for the depression or psychotic illness experienced by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people in the UK.
James talks to the psychiatrists investigating this new understanding of mental illness and to people who may benefit from treatments aimed at the immune systems rather than their brain cells.  Professor of Biological Psychiatry Carmine Pariante @ King's College London
"I believe this is one of the strongest discoveries in psychiatry in the last twenty years", says Professor Carmine Pariante of his and other research on the immune system and depression.
"It allows us to understand depression no longer as just a disorder of the mind and not even a disorder of the brain, but a disorder of the whole body. It shifts conceptually what we understand about depression."  New York Journalist Susannah Cahalan, author of "Brain on Fire"
James also talks to New York journalist Susannah Cahalan. She began to experience paranoid delusions and florid hallucinations when her immune system made damaging antibodies against part of the molecular circuitry in her brain. Treatment to eliminate the antibodies prevented her committal to psychiatric hospital.
Psychiatrist Professor Belinda Lennox at the University of Oxford says she has evidence that a significant proportion of people presenting for the first time with psychotic symptoms are victims of a similar autoimmune problem.
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Treatable Immune System Disorder Could Be Mistaken For Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder
Houston Methodist Research Center
Summary: A major finding from researchers at Houston Methodist reveals a significant number of people diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder may actually have a treatable immune system disorder.
The condition causes NMDA receptors to stop functioning properly and can result in symptoms commonly associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. Source: Houston Methodist. “We suspect that a significant number of people believed to have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder actually have an immune system disorder that affects the brain’s receptors,” said Joseph Masdeu, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s principal investigator and a neurologist with the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute. “If true, those people have diseases that are completely reversible – they just need a proper diagnosis and treatment to help them return to normal lives.” |
