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The data and information presented in this web site are presented in good faith and believed to be accurate regarding Lyme disease (commonly misspelled lymes disease lyme's disease lime disease limes disease) and other related diseases. Any and all liability for the content or any omissions including any inaccuracies, errors, or misstatements in such data or information is expressly disclaimed. The web site is compiled for the sole purpose of informing community members of resources and information pertaining to Lyme Borreliosis Disease and its coinfections. Lyme disease symptoms may vary from person to person.
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Consult a qualified Lyme ( Borreliosis ) Disease literate doctor for medical advice if Lyme Disease is suspect.
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**********NOTICE**********
In accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107,
this material is distributed without profit
for research and educational purposes.
==============================================================
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3540627/
Diseases of the Mind
Bacteria, viruses and parasites may cause mental illnesses
like depression and perhaps even autism and anorexia
By Janet Ginsburg
Newsweek International
Dec. 1 2005, issue - Olga Skipko has had the good fortune to live
most of her adult life in the Polish village of Gruszki, in
the heart of the Puszcza Bialowieska, one of Europe's most
beautiful forests and home to wolves, lynxes and the
endangered European bison. Unfortunately, the forest is
also a breeding ground for disease-carrying ticks. Skipko,
49, thinks she was bitten about 10 years ago, when she
began having the classic symptoms of Lyme borreliosis, a
tickborne nervous-system disease: headaches and aching
joints. She didn't get treatment until 1998. "I was treated
with antibiotics and felt a bit better," she says.
That was only the beginning of her troubles. A few years
later, she began to forget things and her speaking grew
labored. It got so bad that she had to quit her job in a
nursery forest and check herself in to a psychiatric
clinic. "I hope they will help me," she says. "I promised
my children that when I come back home, I will be able to
do my favorite crosswords again." Doctors ran a battery of
tests and concluded that her mental problems were the
advanced stage of the Lyme disease she had contracted years
ago.
Scientists have long known that some diseases can cause
behavioral problems. When penicillin was first used to
treat syphilis, thousands of cured schizophrenics were
released from mental asylums. Now, however, scientists have
evidence that infections may play a far bigger role in
mental illness than previously thought. They've linked
cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder
and schizophrenia to a variety of infectious agents, and
they're investigating autism, Tourette's and anorexia as
well. They're beginning to suspect that bad bugs may cause
a great many other mental disorders, too. "The irony is
that people talked about syphilis as the 'great imitator',"
says University of Louisville biologist Paul Ewald, "but it
may be the 'great illustrator'-a model for understanding
the causes of chronic diseases."
Mental illnesses constitute a large and growing portion of
the world's health problems. According to the World Health
Organization, depression is one of the most debilitating of
diseases, on a par with paraplegia. Psychiatric illnesses
make up more than 10 percent of the world's "disease
burden" (a measure of how debilitating a disease is), and
are expected to increase to 15 percent by 2020. Much of
this may be the work of viruses, bacteria and parasites.
Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, of the Stanley Medical
Research Institute in Maryland, has found from studying
historical asylum records that hot spots-higher-than-normal
incidences-of mental illness can shift, much like
infectious-disease outbreaks, which lends credence to the
notion that infectious agents play a big role. "Mental
disorders are the major chronic recurrent disorders of
youth in all developed countries," says Harvard policy
expert Ronald Kessler, who directs the WHO's mental-health
surveys.
Perhaps the most well known disease that's been linked to
mental disorders is Lyme disease, which is caused by the
Borrelia burgdorferi germ. First identified in the
mid-1970s among children near Lyme, Connecticut, the
disease has long been known to cause nervous-system
problems and achy joints if left untreated. Now scientists
are finding that Lyme disease can also trigger a whole
smorgasbord of psychiatric symptoms, including depression.
One New York man (we'll call him Joe) found out firsthand
how debilitating the disease can be. When he began having
bouts of major depression back in 1992, he had forgotten
all about the tick bite he had gotten four years earlier.
He spent two years in a blur of antipsychotic drugs, mental
institutions, jails and suicide attempts. On a hunch, a
doctor at a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey had Joe
tested for Lyme disease. After an intensive course of
antibiotics, Joe's improvement was dramatic and immediate.
"I started to have this fog lift," he recalls. Still, he
will probably have to be on psychotropic drugs for the rest
of his life.
Some psychiatrists fret that there may be thousands of
people suffering from Lyme-induced depression without
knowing why. Not only is Lyme disease tricky to
diagnose-not everybody gets the circular rash, and lab
tests still aren't wholly reliable-it can take a decade or
more for mental disorders to set in. The U.S. Centers for
Disease Control says that nine out of 10 cases of Lyme
diseases remain unreported. There are 15 species of
borellias-making them the most common tickborne
disease-producing bacteria in the world.
For its part, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which can be
found in undercooked meat and cat feces, can lead to
full-blown psychotic episodes. Some studies suggest that
the parasite stimulates the production of a chemical
similar to LSD, producing hallucinations and psychosis.
Even when the parasite lies dormant in muscle and brain
tissue, it can affect attention span and reaction time in
otherwise healthy people. Researchers at Charles University
in Prague have discovered that people who test positive
have slightly slower-than-average reaction times
and-possibly as a result-are almost three times as likely
to have car accidents. That's a disturbing prospect,
considering that the disease is so widespread: billions of
people are thought to be infected.
Even a simple sore throat can lead to psychiatric problems.
Few children avoid coming down with a streptococcus
infection, also known as strep. Scientists now think that
one in 1,000 strep sufferers also develops abrupt-onset
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in a matter of weeks.
Strep bacteria trigger OCD by igniting an overzealous
response from the immune system, which attacks certain
types of brain cells, causing inflammation. Symptoms
generally die down after a few months but can flare up
again, especially if there's another bout of strep, says
Susan Swedo, a childhood-disease expert at the National
Institutes of Health. The most effective treatment, still
experimental, is to filter out the misbehaving antibodies
from the blood. Best is to treat strep early on.
The specter of a depression germ or contagious
obsessive-compulsive disorder is unnerving, but it also
opens up many more treatment options-antibiotics, vaccines,
checking for ticks. Geneticists believe that diseases may
trigger the onset of inherited mental illnesses by
activating key genes. Avoiding and treating infection may
be just as important as the genes you inherit, and a whole
lot easier to do something about.
With Joanna Kowalska In Warsaw
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
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