Is Schizophrenia Caused By Parasites? Interesting Article

TreasureVibe

Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2016
Messages
1,941
Hi all. So while speaking to a friend with schizophrenia a thought popped up, what if schizophrenia or other intrusive thoughts were caused or influenced by parasites? So I decided to Google search for it and I came across this very interesting article on Psychology today:


https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201511/catching-madness

Some quotes from the article:

E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist with the Stanley Medical Research Institute, has been studying the connection between cats, parasites, and mental illness. According to Torrey, a known parasite that can lead to madness is carried by the common household cat. In his book, The Invisible Plague, he reveals that around 1808, schizophrenia was swiftly transformed from a rare to a relatively common disease. That same year, as cat ownership became popular in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world, U.S. schizophrenia rates rose sharply.

This is no coincidence, Torrey contends. Cats transmit the one-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii that causes the disease toxoplasmosis. It is already implicated in prenatal brain damage, abnormal head size, deafness, seizures, cerebral palsy, retinal damage, and mental retardation. Torrey and others think it does more: They argue that T. gondii infection causes schizophrenia.

Researchers are unmasking the microbial roots of myriad illnesses; maladies as seemingly trivial as a sore throat can breed anorexia, Tourette's, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or schizophrenia. Researchers estimate that infectious organisms cause from 10 percent to 75 percent of serious mental disorders. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other infectious agents are responsible for many of the illnesses that we have long ascribed to genetics.

As for T. gondii, Torrey and colleagues suspect that it causes subtle changes to an infected fetus that could lead to schizophrenia 20 years later. In 2008, Torrey and Robert Yolken of Johns Hopkins published a study indicating that the peak age for becoming infected by T. gondii, between 18 and 35, coincides with the peak age for the first signs of schizophrenia. They also noted that in areas where felines are rare the prevalence rates of both toxoplasmosis and schizophrenia are low. By 2005, studies reported in journals like the American Journal of Psychiatry found that children of mothers who contracted T. gondii while pregnant had higher rates of schizophrenia in adulthood than did other children. But Torrey also found that, in fact, the most strongly positive schizophrenia correlations were not with T. gondii infections acquired in the womb, but with those that struck children and teenagers.

Torrey and Yolken argue that sandboxes are a possible culprit. "A likely mechanism for exposure to T. gondii in childhood is playing in the dirt of sandboxes contaminated with T. gondii oocysts," they write, explaining that each uncovered public sandbox studied is used as a litterbox by four to 24 cats. The cats shed T. gondii eggs and cysts that find their way onto the hands of children. The sandboxes provide convenient sites for research showing how urban areas where cats have a high rate of infection become areas where children's later schizophrenia rates are similarly elevated.
 
OP
T

TreasureVibe

Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2016
Messages
1,941
Interesting!
Also found this:

Messing with the brain's messengers

Scientists from the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (LIN) have shown that Toxoplasma gondii influences the metabolism of its host's brain.

The parasite alters the molecular composition of synapses, which are responsible for signal-processing in the brain, according to the research published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

"Toxoplasma gondii is absorbed by humans via digestion, enters the bloodstream and also migrates into the brain to get into nerve cells for the rest of one's life," said Karl-Heinz Smalla of the Special Laboratory for Molecular Biology Techniques at LIN.

....

Treatment at hand

The good news is, sulfadiazine, an antibiotic used to treat toxoplasmosis infections, restored the infected mice's brain metabolism to normal.

"All investigated proteins responsible for the glutamatergic signal transmission were back to normal. The inflammatory activity also decreased measurably," said Björn Schott of the team in Magdeburg.

Source: New research reveals how toxoplasmosis alters the brain | DW | 09.11.2018
 

Alpha

Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2018
Messages
236

So men with high fWHR and dominant skulls tend to be psychotic.

Your second and third post are contradictory in head size. And how is polarity in domestication analogous to an autism-schizophrenic spectrum?
 

johnwester130

Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2015
Messages
3,563
So men with high fWHR and dominant skulls tend to be psychotic.

Your second and third post are contradictory in head size. And how is polarity in domestication analogous to an autism-schizophrenic spectrum?

i don't know

I didn't take the studies very seriously
 
Joined
Aug 21, 2018
Messages
1,237
T. gondii caused toxoplasmosis theoretically should be easly curable with methylene blue malaria protocol.
 

PolishSun

Member
Joined
May 25, 2020
Messages
447
Yes, the parasites want the host to be eaten, so it could spread and multiply, so it makes sense to give the host brain fog or mental problems, so it would not protect itself from the enemies or preditors.
 

I'm.No.One

Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2021
Messages
747
Location
Oregon
Hi all. So while speaking to a friend with schizophrenia a thought popped up, what if schizophrenia or other intrusive thoughts were caused or influenced by parasites? So I decided to Google search for it and I came across this very interesting article on Psychology today:


Catching Madness

Some quotes from the article:
Weird random fact:

People with rh- blood (raises hand) are resistant to toxoplasmosis.

I wonder if there's a way to cross reference this to the average blood type of people with schizophrenia.
 
K

Kayaker

Guest
Yes, the parasites want the host to be eaten, so it could spread and multiply, so it makes sense to give the host brain fog or mental problems, so it would not protect itself from the enemies or preditors.
But brain fog is a reaction to any type of bacteria poop (endotoxin), which causes an inflammatory response. While viruses can be benign, I'm not aware of bacteria, fungi, or parasites that can remain in the blood without harming the organism.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom