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Virus may cause schizophrenia

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

A VIRUS which infected our ancestors 20 million years ago may today contribute to schizophrenia, scientists have found.

The molecular footprint of the ancient retrovirus infection has been found in the cerebrospinal fluid of about 30 per cent of people with acute schizophrenia and about seven per cent of people with a chronic form of the disease.

Schizophrenia, a broad set of brain disorders, affects one person in every 100. Viruses are packages of genetic material wrapped in a protein coat. Most use DNA but some, the retroviruses, store their instructions in an ancient kind of genetic material called RNA.

This is copied into DNA to form a "provirus" which is inserted into the human genetic code and can be passed down generations. The footprint - viral RNA - showed the ancient virus was activated in the central nervous system of some people in the early stages of schizophrenia but was absent in the brains of people who did not have the disorder.

The findings are contained in a report in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr Robert Yolken of Johns Hopkins Children's Centre, Baltimore, who did the study with colleagues in Sweden and Germany.

The footprint is caused by the active use of a type of human endogenous retroviral element, or Herv. Unlike HIV and other retroviruses, endogenous retroviruses are a natural part of the human genetic code.

Dr Yolken said: "Our ultimate hope is that we can interfere with the retrovirus by preventing it from becoming active. If we can do that, it may give doctors another method of treating schizophrenia."

Scientists have worked out the genetic sequence of Streptococcus pyogenes, a bacterium that causes a wide variety of diseases, from strep throat to impetigo, pneumonia, acute kidney inflammation, toxic shock syndrome, blood poisoning, rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease, and the flesh-eating disease known as necrotising fasciitis.

The sequencing project, by researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Centre, should aid development of vaccines.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001

Answers

with all this they can do, sure wish they could reverse Altzhimers!

Sometimes I think they have cures for alot of things.....they just "can't" use them.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001