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[...] 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 Immerman on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:20PM (1 child)
One of the problems is that pain killers are often not really that great at killing pain - at least not while leaving you functional, nor without requiring a steadily escalating dosage over the long term. And doctors are often worried about creating more addicts, and err on the side of caution, unlike the drug companies and disreputable pharmacists, who directly benefit from addicts.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:54PM
Those are good points. I was just pissed off that when you donate blood they have "all you can drink" fruit juices and "all you can eat" cookie buffet and more. And then some dude donates bone marrow and its like "in pain? oh well, no pills for you"