Pregnant women infected with the genital herpes virus may face an increased risk of having children who develop schizophrenia and

Pregnant women infected with the genital herpes virus may face an

increased risk of having children who develop schizophrenia and other mental

disorders, research suggests.

Previous studies have suggested that infections in pregnant women,

including measles and the flu, may make their children more prone to

schizophrenia later in life.  But those studies generally were based on

women’s recollections of whether they had had infections during pregnancy.

The new study — the first to identify a possible herpes-schizophrenia

link — is different because it involved adults with mental illness whose

mothers had given blood samples while pregnant.  The researchers were able

to use the samples to identify which women had infections.

Evidence of herpes simplex virus type 2 infections was found in 10 of the

27 mothers, four time higher than the rate in the general population.

“Whether the herpes infection is a direct cause of just a factor is

still unknown,” said Robert Yolken of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, a

co-author of the study, which appears in the November issue of the Archives of

General Psychiatry.

The herpes link is very preliminary, in part because the study involved

only 27 adults with schizophrenia or other psychotic illnesses, said Ezra

Susser, head of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public

Health and at New York State Psychiatric Institute.