Immunity and schizophrenia

Unbelievable: a Japanese man with schizophrenia was diagnosed with cancer. After bone marrow transplantation, both diseases disappeared

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In Japan, doctors described an unusual case: a man who suffered from schizophrenia was diagnosed with cancer. After bone marrow transplantation, both diseases were cured.

At the age of 24, patient N. I started experiencing hallucinations and anxiety. He was haunted by a strong paranoia, it seemed that people could see his thoughts. While watching various TV shows, it seemed to the patient that the characters were transmitting secret signals to him and trying to get in touch.

Psychiatrist Tsuyoshi Miyaoka examined the patient and diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. However, the drunk neuroleptics did not help – as it turned out, the disease is resistant to drugs.

A year later, the patient's health deteriorated significantly. He was constantly tormented by fatigue, severe shortness of breath, high fever and headache. After examination, it turned out that the man suffers from acute myeloid leukemia (a type of blood cancer). To save N.'s life, an urgent bone marrow transplant was required.

After the organ transplant, an unusual phenomenon occurred: the patient stopped experiencing hallucinations, as well as other symptoms associated with mental illness. Doctors examined the patient and found that his schizophrenia had completely disappeared.

Therapy and the course of the disease. BMT – bone marrow transplant; QTP – quetiapine; RIS – risperidone; OLZ – olanzapine; PANSS – scale of assessment of positive and negative syndromes; GAF – scale of assessment of global functioning. Figure from the article by Miyaoka et al.
Remission of Psychosis in Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia following Bone Marrow Transplantation: A Case Report published in Frontiers journal. The translation of the full text of the article can be read here – VM.

At first, doctors thought that this was a short-term improvement, and the disease would soon worsen again. However, more than two years have passed since the transplant. The psychiatrist who first diagnosed N. says: the patient has no signs of illness, even though he does not use any drugs.

Doctors believe that the new bone marrow "rebooted" the patient's immune system. And chemotherapy destroyed the old lymphocytes, so new ones formed in a new organ.

Doctors do not exclude the possibility that the patient was helped by drugs that he took before and after bone marrow transplantation. However, the very fact of recovery directly indicates that the patient's mental state was somehow related to the immune system.

Many scientists come to a similar conclusion – there is a connection between the immune system and the brain. The first research in this area began to be carried out 100 years ago. In the 19th century, scientists discovered that if a mentally ill patient falls ill with a cold or flu, an increase in temperature and deterioration of the immune system cause an improvement in the mental state of the patient.

For example, the doctor Julius Wagner-Jauregg from Austria even created his own method: he specially infected mentally ill people with malaria so that they would have a feverish state. Some of the patients died as a result, but many were cured of mental illness. Wagner-Jauregg received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1927 for his discovery.

For many years, doctors have been using so-called malaria therapy. In 1950, this method was abandoned because of the threat to the lives of patients. A few years ago, another case of unusual recovery from schizophrenia was described. A mentally ill woman was found to have blood poisoning, accompanied by a high fever. After recovery, the woman got rid of schizoaffective disorder.

At the same time, the opposite cases are also known. So, in the Netherlands, a patient with leukemia had a bone marrow transplant of his brother, who suffered from schizophrenia. As a result, the patient was cured of cancer, but after a while he was diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Such cases are rare in medicine, but in recent years, doctors around the world have been recording more and more unusual healings. Scientists have begun to actively study the relationship between mental illness and the human immune system.

Professor of neurovirology Robert Yolken claims that very often people suffering from schizophrenia have an immune imbalance.

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