Segundo Mesa Castillo
Psychiatric Hospital of Havana, Cuba
Title: Direct confirmation of viral infection and mitochondrial modifications in the brain of fetuses at great risk for schizophrenia
Biography
Biography: Segundo Mesa Castillo
Abstract
Background: There is increasing evidences that favor the prenatal beginning of schizophrenia. These proofs point in the direction of intra-uterine environmental influences that act especially in the course of the second pregnancy trimester creating a straight damage of the brain of the fetus. The existing accessible technology doesn't permit detecting what is happening at cellular level since the human brain is not visible to a straight analysis in that stage of the life in subjects at great risk of emerging schizophrenia.
Methods: In 1977, we instigated a direct electron microscopic investigation of the brain of fetuses at great risk from schizophrenic mothers in imperative to finding differences at cellular level in kin to controls.
Results: In these studies, we have noticed within the nuclei of neurons the existence of complete and incomplete viral particles that responded in progressive form with antibodies to herpes simplex hominis type I [HSV1] virus, and mitochondria alterations.
Conclusion: The significance of these findings can have useful applications in the deterrence of the illness keeping in awareness it’s direct relative to the aetiology and physiopathology of schizophrenia. A study of amniotic fluid cells in females at danger of taking a schizophrenic offspring is measured. Of being detected the same changes that those detected previously in the cells of the brain of the studied foetuses, it would mean to these females in risk of having a schizophrenia offspring, the voluntary medical disturbance of the pregnancy, earlier sign of the results, or an early anti HSV1 viral treatment as defensive measure of the later progress of the sickness.