Some psychotic episodes 'may be triggered by immune disorders'

Conclusion The implication of the headlines reporting on this study is that many people diagnosed with schizophrenia or another psychiatric illness might have been misdiagnosed, and that they need treatment for an immune disease instead. If true, that would be a massive concern. But the results of this study don't really bear out these fears. There's no evidence that most of the antibodies tested are more common in people with psychosis than in people without mental illness. Only one antibody, NMDAR, was significantly more common in people with psychosis than in the control group. Only 3% of people with psychosis had this antibody, and none in the control group. However, the control group of 105 was pretty small for this type of research, so it's hard to know if the results would hold true for a bigger group. We'd need to test many more people to be sure that nobody without a mental health condition had antibodies against NMDAR. Because the study only looked at people's antibodies at one point in time, we don't know whether they might have caused the symptoms of psychosis or not. If the antibodies only appeared after the symptoms started, they might be an effect of the disease, not a cause of it. Psychosis is not the only symptom of antibody-mediated encephalitis. Although it may be the first symptom, people also have neurological symptoms such as seizures and movement disorders. It's likely that these would be noticed by doctors treating people for psychotic diseases ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Mental health Neurology Source Type: news