schizophrenia a pathogenetic autoimmune disease caused by viruses and pathogens and dependent on genes精神分裂症发病的自身免疫性疾病由病毒引起,病原体和依赖的基因.pdf

SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research Journal of Pathogens Volume 2011, Article ID 128318, 37 pages doi:10.4061/2011/128318 Research Article Schizophrenia: A Pathogenetic Autoimmune Disease Caused by Viruses and Pathogens and Dependent on Genes C. J. Carter Polygenic Pathways, 20 Upper Maze Hill, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, TN38 OLG, UK Correspondence should be addressed to C. J. Carter, chris car@ Received 30 November 2010; Accepted 25 February 2011 Academic Editor: Man W. Tan Copyright © 2011 C. J. Carter. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Many genes have been implicated in schizophrenia as have viral prenatal or adult infections and toxoplasmosis or Lyme disease. Several autoantigens also target key pathology-related proteins. These factors are interrelated. Susceptibility genes encode for proteins homologous to those of the pathogens while the autoantigens are homologous to pathogens’ proteins, suggesting that the risk-promoting effects of genes and risk factors are conditional upon each other, and dependent upon protein matching between pathogen and susceptibility gene products. Pathogens’ proteins may act as dummy ligands, decoy receptors, or via interactome interference. Many such proteins are immunogenic suggesting that antibody mediated knockdown of multiple schizophrenia gene products could contribute to the disease, explaining the immune activation in the brain and lymphocytes in schizophrenia, and the preponderance of immune-related gene variants in the schizophrenia genome. Schizophrenia may thus be a “pathogenetic” autoimmune disorder, caused by pathogens, genes, and the immune