Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by poor emotional responsiveness. According to the WHO the disorder affects around 0.3–0.7% of people at some point in their life, or 24 million people worldwide as of 2011. There is no general cure and the pharmacologic treatment of schizophrenia leaves much to be desired.

Now the National Institute for Health Research in the U.K. is funding a large research trial on Minocycline beginning this April.

Scientists believe schizophrenia and other mental illnesses including depression and Alzheimer’s disease may result from inflammatory processes in the brain. Minocycline, which is a broad-spectrum tetracycline antibiotic, has anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects, which could account for the recent positive findings.

The new hope comes after case reports from Japan in which the drug was prescribed to a young male patient with schizophrenia.  The young man had no previous psychiatric history but became agitated and suffered auditory hallucinations, anxiety and insomnia. Blood tests and brain scans showed nothing unusual and he was started on the powerful anti-psychotic drug Halperidol. The treatment had no effect and he was still suffering from psychotic symptoms a week later when he developed severe pneumonia and was prescribed the antibiotic Minocycline to treat the infection. This treatment surprisingly led to dramatic improvements in his psychotic symptoms. When the pneumonia cleared and Minocycline treatment was stopped, the schizophrenia symptoms reappeared.

This serendipitous observation prompted researchers to test Minocycline in patients with schizophrenia around the world. Trials have already been held in Israel, Pakistan and Brazil, with schizophrenic patients showing significant improvement.

Minocycline might be a safe and effective solution to bring symptoms of schizophrenia under control. But more work on how antibiotics alter the inflammation status of the brain remains to be done, as well as trying to find a permanent treatment. Using antibiotics in this way presents a problem. Antibiotics are compounds that are literally ´against life,´ aimed against microbial pathogens. The treatment of infectious diseases by antibiotics is compromised by the development of antibiotic resistance of microbial pathogens. There is a direct correlation over time between antibiotic use and the increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Researchers therefore need to address this issue but the signs are good: Minocycline has been on the market for a while, is broadly described, and resistance seems to have been avoided thus far.

Further reading:

Background information, video links and animations about schizophrenia can be found at the DNA Learning Center’s G2C Online webpage.

Van Os J, Kapur S. Schizophrenia. Lancet. 2009;374(9690):635–45. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60995-8. PMID 19700006

If an individual becomes infected with harmful bacteria they may be prescribed antibiotics to rid the body of that infection.   As the antibiotic begins to work, the harmful (and some helpful) cells will be killed off but not all of them.  When start to eliminate a number of the bacteria making you ill, you will probably start to feel significantly better.  At this point it is important to continue to take the antibiotic until the prescription is complete.  The reason is that after a few days of the antibiotic some of the harmful cells will still be alive in your body.  It is possible that these cells will take up genes for resistance to the antibiotic from some of the other bacteria that are already living inside of you.  These harmful cells with newly acquired resistance genes will divide and produce clones of themselves.  Unfortunately you will start to feel sick again and if you tried to take the remainder of your antibiotic they would have a defense against it.  

The fact that different types of bacteria can share genes enables them to survive under selective pressure.  Just one of the amazing charactericstics of these simple cells.  Although we may think of bacteria as a nuisance they have much to teach us.