Cats linked to schizophrenia

by MYRANDA MOWAFI, Daily Mail

Scientists are investigating a possible link between cats and schizophrenia.

They believe a parasite carried by a small number of cats could trigger the mental illness which affects one in 100 people.

An American professor of psychiatry is due to test a drug which would combat the effects of the virus caused by the parasite, toxoplasma.

Professor Fuller Torrey, of the Uniformed Services University Health Service in Maryland, hopes the anti-viral drug, Acyclovir, will improve the condition of schizophrenic patients and prove the link he has always upheld.

In 1995 he and Robert Yolken, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, suggested a link between cats and the condition based on a finding that 51 per cent of schizophrenics had been exposed to cats during childhood, compared with 38 per cent of a control group.

Research also suggests there is a higher incidence of schizophrenia in countries where cats are kept as pets.

If it is proved that a virus could cause schizophrenia, whether from cats or another source, it will be a major medical breakthrough. The illness has baffled doctors for hundreds of years.

There is currently no cure for the disease. An estimated one third of schizophrenic patients get better, a third do not, and the remainder suffer episodes of illness.

If experts are able to identify viruses involved, doctors would be able to treat schizophrenia with anti-viral drugs, immune boosters or, in the case of bacterial infections, with simple antibiotics.

Professor Tim Crow of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford and an adviser to the mental health charity Sane said: 'We've done work on the idea that there could be a viral link with schizophrenia.

'Influenza was a candidate at one time but we couldn't find a connection and we have also followed up suggestions of a virus in spinal fluid of schizophrenics but didn't find anything.

However, this is certainly a plausible idea.'

Schizophrenia tends to run in families. It is most commonly diagnosed in young men aged between 16 and 28.

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