Immune System Activated in Schizophrenia

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2009) — Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have discovered that patients with recent-onset schizophrenia have higher levels of inflammatory substances in their brains. Their findings offer hope of being able to treat schizophrenia with drugs that affect the immune system.

The causes of schizophrenia are largely unknown, and this hinders the development of effective treatments. One theory is that infections caught early on in life might increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, but to date any direct evidence of this has not been forthcoming.

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet have now been able to analyse inflammatory substances in the spinal fluid of patients with schizophrenia, instead of, as in previous studies, in the blood. The results show that patients with recent-onset schizophrenia have raised levels of a signal substance called interleukin-1beta, which can be released in the presence of inflammation. In the healthy control patients, this substance was barely measurable.

"This suggests that the brain's immune defence system is activated in schizophrenia," says Professor Göran Engberg, who led the study. "It now remains to be seen whether there is an underlying infection or whether the immune system is triggered by some other means."

According to the dominant hypothesis, schizophrenia is related to an overactive dopamine system. Previous studies have shown that interleukin-1beta can upset the dopamine system in rats in a similar way to schizophrenia in humans.

"We would have made terrific progress if we were one day able to treat schizophrenia patients with immunotherapy, as it might then be possible to interrupt the course of the disease at an early stage of its development," says Professor Engberg.

The group is now studying if the inflammatory process is only activated in connection with the development of schizophrenia, or whether chronic patients exhibit the same phenomenon.

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COMMENT: Throughout the history of the human race, a small percentage of the population served their tribes as "shamans", a combination herbalist/psychologist/priest. The healing modality of shamanism is reminiscent of Jungian psychotherapy, in that it deals with archetypal images and the individual's connections to both the whole human race and the cosmos. This recognition of the human need to be part of a larger context was an essential function that the shaman performed for the tribe.

However, the process of becoming an effective shaman was difficult, painful, and fraught with danger. A man or woman who could become a shaman would necessarily be a different type of person than the majority (or, "the normal people"). The process of becoming a shaman would require opening consciousness to a perception of this larger context, which would include elements of reality - internal and external - that normal people do not perceive and could not therefore help the potential shaman prepare for. This experience inevitably fractured the individual, which is a necessary part of the process.

But then the person is supposed to learn how to handle these outside-of-normal perceptions, so that s/he can re-integrate those fractured parts. Upon completion of this process the shaman comes back into the tribe at a higher level of functioning than before the initiation, and therefore can help the tribe maintain that perspective of being part of something larger than themselves.

In modern western "civilization" when a person who has this potential begins this process - whether internally generated or as a result of some particular experience in life - s/he is labeled "schizophrenic", and as the parts I bolded in the article above demonstrate, all of society is dedicated to PREVENTING him/her from completing the process.

And if such a person should succeed in avoiding the medication - which is designed to "make him/her normal again", which is literally "prevent him/her from becoming able to perform that function for society" - and actually reintegrate, the shaman finds him- or herself in a society that desperately needs what s/he has to offer, but they don't WANT it.

For more on this, see http://www.jungcircle.com/Schizophrenia.html

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