American researchers have discovered that a teenager’s schizophrenia was triggered by a bacterium transmitted by a cat.
In the United States, researchers report a new clinical case, detailed in the journal Journal of Central Nervous System Disease. A 14-year-old teenager who, overnight, is suffering from severe psychotic disorders. And this, because of the Bartonella bacterium, the bacterium of kittens. The researchers’ discovery followed eighteen months of medical wandering.
It all starts the day this young boy explains that he is “a damned son of the devil” and that he wants to end his life. He is restless, confused, therefore expresses depressive feelings. Very quickly, he was admitted to the hospital where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The adolescent is treated with antipsychotics, which, after a week, allow him to no longer have suicidal or murderous impulses. On the other hand, he still suffers from psychoses.
18 months of suffering and misunderstanding
The young man returns home but very quickly his condition worsens. Obsessive thoughts, emotional instability and fits of rage… He is forced to stop classes. The teenager is convinced that one of his cats is trying to kill him. In December 2015, it was his mother’s turn to have to stop working to take care of him. New symptoms appear: visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations, extreme fatigue, migraines, panic attacks. For eighteen months, about fifteen specialists will look into his case, without managing to improve his condition. The list of treatments is growing: antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines. But nothing helps.
An “edifying” clinical case
It will take yet another hospitalization, in January 2017, to save the teenager. The doctors discover that he is actually suffering from an infectious schizophrenia caused by the bacterium Bartonella henselae. Sure enough, the patient lived in a home with multiple cats and “had experienced cat bites and scratches shortly before illness onset,” according to the study. This bacterium, transmitted in this way, can cause infections.
“It is an edifying clinical case”, declares Dr Guillaume Fond, psychiatrist at the Hospitals of Marseille and responsible for the Expert Center for schizophrenia and resistant depression. “It shows that doctors must systematically think about this track in the event of a new case of schizophrenia, which is still too little explored to date.” In November 2017, the teenager’s psychoses disappeared.
The bacterium of kittens, responsible for other pathologies?
For his part Ed Breitschwerdt, professor emeritus of internal medicine at North Carolina State University and lead author of the study, believes that “this case raises the question of the frequency with which the infection can be associated with general psychiatric disorders. There are few studies on the subject so far. But some researchers are examining the probable link between the Bartonella bacterium and Alzheimer’s disease, for example. “Beyond this case, there are many attempts to understand the potential role of viral and bacterial infections in these medically complex diseases. This clinical case gives us evidence that there may be a link and offers the possibility of conduct research in the future.”
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