He Got Schizophrenia. He Got Cancer. And Then He Got Cured.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/...latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront

Interesting........

 

From the above article.......

“In the late 19th century, physicians noticed that when infections tore through psychiatric wards, the resulting fevers seemed to cause an improvement in some mentally ill and even catatonic patients.

Inspired by these observations, the Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg developed a method of deliberate infection of psychiatric patients with malaria to induce fever. Some of his patients died from the treatment, but many others recovered. He won a Nobel Prize in 1927.”

 

I had a cold for the first time in 8 years earlier this year and for the duration my agitation and brain over stimulation virtually disappeared. It's depressing to think that I would be happier with a never ending cold than with this disease.

 

I love how academic psychiatry keeps rediscovering things (like fever) that every asylum shrink knew 100 years ago.

 

I wrote myself a little note from one of the speakers when watching the Stanford symposium lectures yesterday that ‘infection may bring about a cure’.!!!

 

Anecdotally, last year my whole family got seriously sick with flu, while I only had some nausea for a few hours. Surprisingly, I found myself feeling better for the next few days.. don't remember exactly how long it lasted though..

 

I am one of those that get remissions with viruses/ colds. But I revert back to Cfs once infection is gone. I had Zica twice ( not sure how that is possible) and got remissions and felt the momment i switch back. Same w colds, I can tell inmidiately when virus is suppressed, I get that Cfs brain feeling / fatigue like somebody flips a switch.

 

hm. Is our body temp running a bit low? Could a mild fever (increase in body temp) compensate for that? Of course there's much more going on with an infection & response than fever. Immune something-something, inflammation one type vs another type. ???

 

Microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, are made in the bone marrow and then translocate to the brain. I've wondered whether an infection in the bone marrow might use microglia as a Trojan horse to get into the brain.

We often think of viral entry into the brain in terms of the vagus nerve route, or the olfactory nerve route, but I wonder if the translocation of microglia from bone marrow to brain might be another as yet undiscovered route?

 

Note to self: don't let any of my schizophrenic relatives (2 of my first cousins have it) donate bone marrow to me. (excerpt below is from the article)

"Another case study from the Netherlands highlights this still-mysterious relationship. In this study, on which Dr. Yolken is a co-author, a man with leukemia received a bone-marrow transplant from a schizophrenic brother. He beat the cancer but developed schizophrenia. Once he had the same immune system, he developed similar psychiatric symptoms."

 

Looking at some recent reviews of 100 year old psychiatric literature, it appears that fever therapy (pyrotherapy) by intentionally infecting the patient with malaria was quite effective for neurosyphilis (this was in the pre-antibiotic era). About a quarter of psychotic patients were able to leave the asylum and resume work, a quarter benefitted somewhat and the other half either got no better or got worse and died. Neurosyphilis was a fatal disease at the time (spirochete in the brain) so the results are fairly impressive.

We know anecdotally that fever can make some people with autism and ME/CFS feel more normal. This would fit in with Stanford symposium data suggesting that IDO is inhibited in ME/CFS resulting in accumulation of intracellular tryptophan and depletion of kynurenine. It's not surprising that infection (interferon gamma challenge?) could nudge some people out of it.

 

When I was at my most ill. I always felt much better with a cold. I also would give myself poison ivy on purpose . This greatly alleviated my cfs symptoms.

 

When I first go ME and went back to the student health center to tell them that I was not recovering well from the nasty flu I had, the told me (twice) that I could not be ill because I had a low temperature and white blood cell count. Low, not normal.

Poison ivy or CFS. That is not a very good choice.