The old  theory that schizophrenia

triggered by a virus or other infectious agent that deranges normal brain development is

factors — including an inherited susceptibility — probably combine to produce the

disorder.  But there is increasing evidence to suggest that genes from viruses that

originally came from retroviruses (a large family that includes the human immunodeficiency

virus or HIV, the cause of AIDS), can sometimes be activated when a person is infected

with a different virus, or by some other factor during fetal life or infancy.  This,

environment, that are turning on [these retrovirus genes] in some people during brain

development,” said Robert H. Yolken, director of the Stanley Division of

infections dates back to the mid-19th century.  However, researchers said the viral

theory has received greater credibility in the past few years, particularly as genetic

theory of viral triggers for schizophrenia] one of the significant leads that we

have,” said David Shore, associate director for clinical research at the National

Institute of Mental Health. “I would say it’s pretty unlikely that it is a particular

virus.  It may well be that it’s either the effect of a nonspecific infection or

symptoms between the ages of 16 and 25.  People with the illness often hear voices,

suffer from delusions, have abnormal thought processes and may experience extremes of

those of people without the disease have revealed subtle differences in various parts of

the brain, including the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, cingulate gyrus and prefrontal

cortex.  These areas of the brain are major relay stations filtering all sensory

input from the outside world.  But why they apparently develop abnormally in

and to bipolar disorder, another serious mental illness, because more than 200 studies

have found that people born between December and March have rates of these disorders that

are 5 to 8 percent higher than people born at other times of year, said E. Fuller Torrey,

co-director of the Stanley Laboratory on Brain Research at the Uniformed Services

University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda. Viral infections are more frequent during

the winter months. Some studies have also found slightly higher rates of schizophrenia in

schizophrenia rates among people born or raised in cities are about twice as high as among

people who are born or grow up in rural areas, suggesting environmental factors could be

genetic component than schizophrenia. For example, in pairs of identical twins, if one

twin has bipolar disorder, the chance of the other twin having it is between 55 and 65

percent, Torrey said. If one of a pair of such twins has schizophrenia, the likelihood of

in schizophrenia at a Bethesda symposium sponsored by Johns Hopkins University School of

pregnant women at hospitals around the country in the 1950s and 1960s.  Among infants

born to women who lived in Boston and Providence, R.I., 27 were identified as having

developed schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or psychosis, a related form of mental illness.

  Stephen Buka of the Harvard School of Public Health tested the blood obtained from

from the mothers of the affected children had significantly higher levels of antibodies

(indicative of infections during pregnancy) and, in particular, higher levels of antibody

to the type 2 herpes virus, a sexually transmitted infection that sometime causes severe

brain damage in newborn infants.  Buka said this is not yet sufficient to prove that

the herpes virus contributes to development of schizophrenia, but he intends to conduct

possible triggers of schizophrenia, said Hopkins’s Yolken.  In animals and people,

such viruses can cause infections that may remain latent for long periods but may

eventually produce abnormal brain function and behavior.  HIV, for example, causes

endogenous retroviruses — viral genes that have become incorporated as part of human

chromosomes and are passed from parent to child — may play a role in schizophrenia.

Yolken suggested that other viral infections, hormones or chemical messengers released by

the immune system might activate such genes, setting off the process that leads to

animals, and make up about 1 percent of the human genome, said Jonas Blomberg of Sweden’s

University of Uppsala Department of Microbiology.  Some of these genes make proteins

  that can be detected in many human organs, and in a few tissues — especially the

placenta and certain cancers — the genes can code for the manufacture of complete,

retroviruses in spinal fluid samples from 35 patients who had just begun to suffer

symptoms of schizophrenia. Spinal fluid surrounds the brain and spinal cord and is often

used to test for brain infections.  The samples were obtained within 14 days of

admission to the hospital.  He detected genetic material from such viruses in 10

patients (29 percent).  The rate was lower (8%) in a group of schizophrenics who had

been sick for an average of four years and lower still (5 percent) in a third group whose

retrovirus called MSRV (multiple sclerosis-related virus) that was recently discovered in

patients with that degenerative neurological disease.  Researchers are doing further

studies trying to determine whether genes from such viruses produce proteins that damage

with the disease,” said Lorraine Jones-Brando of the Stanley Division of

drugs developed to treat AIDS  — a retrovirus infection — might help people with

the mental disorder, Torrey suggested.  He said he has proposed a study using one of

the newer anti-HIV drugs (he declined to say which one) as an experimental treatment for

people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  The drug’s manufacturer and various