So there’s zombie ants, a fat causing virus, and toxoplasmosis can make you like cats. Even ulcers turn out to be associated with pathogens.
Has there been any widespread study to reassess various maladies and conditions to see if they are actually associated with a pathogen?
How about studies to correlate mental disease, social problems, and various behavioral tendencies with pathogens?
(For each of these, I’ve linked to example articles which are part of a broader body of evidence, not just one lab group or journalist spouting off.)
There is some evidence suggesting that Toxoplasma can, indeed, cause schizophrenia (and anti-psychotics may have effects on the organism). Emphasis on the suggesting, nothing has been shown/proven/pick your verb yet, but it is a fascinating prospect.
It’s a little more indirect, but it appears that streptococcal infections may cause or exacerbate some childhood mental illnesses, e.g. OCD, in some individuals due to an autoimmune disorder.
It’s not behavioral, but infectious agents may play a role in atherosclerosis.
A friend’s mother was recently hospitalized then sent to a nursing home with a diagnosis of dementia/etc. Only after some weird behavioral stuff led to further diagnostics being run was she diagnosed with syphilis. Acquired from her recently deceased 82 year old husband?
Doctors at a Swedish psychiatric hospital once thought that they had found a pathogenic cause for schizophrenia when they discovered some substance or other in the blood from their patients. The subject was soon dropped when they came to the conclusion that the origin of it was malnutrition.
I’ve always wondered if there isn’t actually a significent minority of cases of dementia/intellectucal disabilty/mental illness that is caused by factors other then mainstream thinking or by factors that medical experts may have forgotten (ie syphillis )
Docs tend to think " Oh just classify them as whatever, and they’ll get treatment like that and respond well"
Maybe that’s the reason there are a significent minority of people who do not respond to whatever…they were improperly dx and would be better off on a treatment course for syphillis or whatever…
Do they really? Odd, since if by “whatever” you mean dementia/Alzheimers, there is no effective treatment.
Not totally true, there are many pharmacological treatments for Alzheimers and Dementia… However, there isn’t a cure. Most of the current pharmacological treatments are aimed at delaying the progression of the disease, since there is no known cure. But it is an effective treatment.
The personality changes/dementia potentially caused by syphilis actually wouldn’t occur until late in the disease cycle, usually 1-10 years after infection but some cases happened up to 50 years later (warning, yucky photos). She would have only had to not notice/ignore the earlier stages, which could have just been a single sore, then maybe a rash and flu-like symptoms, all of which could have been misattributed.
Also, with the advent of Viagra, STDs (including HIV) are way up in the senior population.
Yes, I misspoke. The current treatments are effective in offering some symptomatic relief. Nonetheless, AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet’s statement doesn’t make any sense. Generally doctors try to exclude other causes of cognitive impairment, because some of those other causes may be far more treatable.
Why would that be so bizarre? She could have gotten it from him before he died. What other way is there to get syphilis?
Well, of course she got it from him antemortem (or from another guy). But where does an 82 year old guy pick it up? I just found it interesting. And the ultimate good news/bad news for the family.
He could have gotten it earlier and just not known. As for where he got it–the same way a younger guy gets syphilis? Plus, as Ferret Herder, STIs are on the rise in senior pops.
FWIW- syphilis screening is one of the basic tests in a delirium screen- along with liver, kidney and thyroid function tests, blood cultures, a full blood count and inflammatory markers to check for infection, and should be performed on anyone with new onset confusion and fluctuating consciousness levels.
There is a theory that as schizophrenia is more common in those born in the autumn and spring, exposure to some pathogen (possibly 'flu virus) in utero at a vulnerable point in foetal brain development might be a cause.
Do remember that many people with mental illness die in manners requiring autopsy (misadventure, suicide, homicide, accident) and therefore have gross and microscopic examination of their brain tissue that should detect most pathogens. It is therefore unlikely that a high proportion of mental illness is directly caused by a known pathogen- if it was we should know by now.
Mental hospitals also give physical examinations and blood tests to patients. Some illnesses such as lupus can affect a person mentally. And mental illness can affect people physically also. Physical distress can be symptomatic of mental illness.
It’s not likely that someone would be in a facility for very long without having an advanced STD detected.
BTW, it’s possible that the elderly woman had had syphillis for a long time. She may have gotten it from her husband in younger years or she may have given it to him.
There have been occasional reports linking Herpes Simplex to Alzheimer’s Disease. Still in the “maybe” stage of research.