[...] Years later, "he is completely off all medication and shows no psychiatric symptoms," Dr. Miyaoka told me in an email. Somehow the transplant cured the man's schizophrenia.
A bone-marrow transplant essentially reboots the immune system. Chemotherapy kills off your old white blood cells, and new ones sprout from the donor's transplanted blood stem cells. It's unwise to extrapolate too much from a single case study, and it's possible it was the drugs the man took as part of the transplant procedure that helped him. But his recovery suggests that his immune system was somehow driving his psychiatric symptoms.
At first glance, the idea seems bizarre — what does the immune system have to do with the brain? — but it jibes with a growing body of literature suggesting that the immune system is involved in psychiatric disorders from depression to bipolar disorder.
He Got Schizophrenia. He Got Cancer. And Then He Got Cured.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:13AM (1 child)
https://www.medicaldaily.com/can-organ-transplant-change-recipients-personality-cell-memory-theory-affirms-yes-247498 [medicaldaily.com]
I know a little girl with a kidney transplant. I'll mail the link to her mother
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:44AM
"Cell Memory Theory" sounds like something a Homeopath might try to sell.
Also Medical Daily "we want our stories to be the kind of things you talk about at a bar with your friends."
I'm not buying it.