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Psychiatry and Biological Factors pp 149–158Cite as

New Experimental Approaches Examining a Viral Etiology of Schizophrenia

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Abstract

Viral infections have been suggested as a possible cause of several chronic disorders of the CNS, including multiple sclerosis (Cook and Dowling, 1980; Koprowski et al., 1985; Reddy et al., 1989; Greenberg et al., 1989), Parkinson’s disease (Ravenholt and Foege, 1982), Alzheimer’s disease (Terry and Davies, 1980), and schizophrenia (Torrey and Peterson, 1976; Tyrrell et al., 1979; Crow, 1983; Wyatt and DeLisi, 1984). Evidence to support a viral etiology of schizophrenia has been based mainly on epidemiological data. These include a season-of-birth effect, where there is an excess of late winter and early spring births (Torrey et al., 1977), and a high prevalence of the disease in some geographic areas (Torrey, 1987). Laboratory attempts to more directly substantiate a viral etiology in schizophrenia have focused on alterations in humoral and cell-mediated immunity (Vartanian et al., 1987; DeLisi et al.,1982; Coffey et al., 1983; Kirch et al., 1985; Roos et al., 1985; DeLisi, 1986; Ganguli et al., 1987), which could reflect a challenge by an infectious agent, and on efforts to identify antibodies to specific viruses in blood (DeLisi and Sarin, 1985; King et al., 1985; Robert-Guroff et al., 1985; Torrey and Kaufmann, 1986), CSF (Torrey et al., 1982; Kaufmann et al., 1983), or postmortem brain material (Stevens et al., 1983). These approaches have led to mixed results with no evidence for a specific virus.

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  1. Anita Feenstra

    Present address: Zentrum für Molekulare Biologie Heidelberg, D-6900, Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuropsychiatry Branch, Intramural Research Program, National Institute of Mental Health, Washington, D.C., 20032, USA

    Anita Feenstra, Darrell G. Kirch, Mark A. Coggiano & Richard Jed Wyatt

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  1. Anita Feenstra
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  2. Darrell G. Kirch
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  1. Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Edouard Kurstak

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© 1991 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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Feenstra, A., Kirch, D.G., Coggiano, M.A., Wyatt, R.J. (1991). New Experimental Approaches Examining a Viral Etiology of Schizophrenia. In: Kurstak, E. (eds) Psychiatry and Biological Factors. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5811-4_12

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