Alert! Infections Requiring Hospitalization in Childhood, Tie to Mental Disorders

By: Yassmine ElSayed

CAIRO, Dec. 9 (SEE) – A recent study revealed that serious infections during childhood have been tied to a subsequent increased risk of mental disorders in a new study, CNN reported.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry onWednesday, found that infections requiring hospitalizations were associatedwith an about 84% increased risk of being diagnosed with any mental disorderand an about 42% increased risk of using psychotropic drugs to treat a mentaldisorder.

Less severe infections treated with anti-infective

medications, like antibiotics, were associated with increased risks of 40% and

22%, respectively, the study found.

“The surprising finding was that the infections in general

-- and in particular, the less severe infections, those that were treated with

anti-infective agents -- increased the risk for the majority of mental

disorders," said Dr. Ole Köhler-Forsberg, a neuroscientist and doctoral

fellow at Aarhus University in Denmark, who led the study.

Yet he emphasized that the study found only a correlation,

so the findings do not mean that infections, or receiving treatment for them,

can cause mental disorders.

"Parents should not be afraid when their children get

sick or when they need antibiotics," Köhler-Forsberg said.

"Infections per say are not bad. People need infections

to develop the immune system, but in some cases, the infection can increase the

risk for a mental disorder," he said. "The overall take-home message

is that there's an intimate connection between the body, the immune system, infections,

inflammation and the brain."

For the study, Köhler-Forsberg and his colleagues analyzed

health data on more than 1 million people born in Denmark between 1995 and

2012, taking a close look at their medical histories from birth to late

adolescence.

The researchers found associations between any treated

infection and the increased risk of later being prescribed medication for

various childhood and adolescent mental disorders, with the risks differing for

specific disorders.

Risks were increased for schizophrenia spectrum disorders,

obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality and behavior disorders, mental

retardation, autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity

disorder, oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder and tic disorders, the

researchers said.

The study has some limitations, including that the data was

analyzed only up to age 18, and there was no way to confirm that patients

really had infections versus being misdiagnosed.

Additionally, because the study was registry-based and

observational, "we can not conclude any causality. So we can not say this

infection led to this mental disorder. So we can only speculate,"

Köhler-Forsberg said.

On his part, William Eaton, a professor of mental health at

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the

study linked some mental disorders with inflammation. He said: "Mostly, if

you take somebody with a mental disorder -- anxiety, depression, schizophrenia

-- and look at their rate of inflammation, it's likely to be higher. There's

likely to be inflammatory cytokines involved in that disorder, and we don't

understand why”.

Pro-inflammatory cytokines are molecules involved in the

body's inflammatory reactions. Higher rates of such molecules or some type of

immune dysfunction may help explain the link between infections and mental

disorders, but more research is needed.

Other hypotheses, noted in the study, include that some

infections might enter the brain and influence neurological processes or that

treatment for infections might alter the gut microbiome -- the ecosystem of

bacteria and other microorganisms -- and this disturbance may impact the brain.