The researchers took blood samples from 17 people with medically controlled schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and a control group of 13 healthy adults to test evidence of Bartonella infection, which is associated with cats exposed to fleas and potentially ticks.
Of the 17 patients with schizophrenia, 12 had Bartonella DNA in their blood, compared with only one of the 13 in the control group. Both groups reported pet ownership and exposures to similar fleas.
The study, published this month in the journal Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, was unable, by design, to show a causal link between Bartonella infection and schizophrenia. But researchers plan to do a more comprehensive study to see if the preliminary results are confirmed.
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Erin Lashnits, who recently joined UW-Madison College, was involved in the research at North Carolina State University. Researchers have been studying the connection between bacterial infection and neuropsychiatric disease for some time, with some studies suggesting that cat ownership is associated with schizophrenia of a parasite that can cause toxoplasmosis, Lashnits said.
“So we decided to look at another infectious agent transmitted by cats, Bartonella, to see if there could be a connection,” he said in a statement.
Bartonella are bacteria historically associated with cat scratch disease, also known as cat scratch fever, which until recently was thought to be just a short-lived or self-limiting infection. In people, the condition can include a blow or blister at the site of a scratch or bite from a cat, and the lymph nodes can become inflamed. People can also feel tired and have a headache or fever.
“While there is an emerging understanding of neuropsychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia as brain network disorders, the question of the real causes remains unanswered,” said co-author Flavio Frohlich, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine of the UNC. “To our knowledge, this is the first work that examines Bartonella’s potential role in schizophrenia.”
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