[health] Yes, You Can Catch Insanity: Reviving the debate about the immune system and mental illness. … a look at the connections between the immune system, inflammation and mental health … ‘Nothing cemented the link between body and brain quite like syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. Before antibiotics, a syphilis infection could be a slow-motion death sentence. In addition to ravaging the body, late-stage syphilis victims often escalated into what doctors at the time called neurosyphilis, a sort of manic, delusional state, before edging over into paralysis and death. It was a clear, common case of an infection causing psychosis.Syphilis was so common it was called “the disease of the century.” Most patients were middle-class men; according to one estimate, 10 percent of patients in turn-of-the-century asylums were there because of neurosyphilis.’

The Immune System, Inflammation and Mental Health

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2015 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Health.

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