Dr. Jeffrey Gladden explains how Bartonella, the bacterium behind cat-scratch fever, can become a chronic infection that flares with stress or other illnesses. Research links it to schizophrenia, psychosis, and OCD, possibly by crossing the blood-brain barrier and triggering inflammation that affects mood and behavior.
Yeah, so if you Google Bartonella, right, you come up with cat scratch fever, and that's the acute form of the disease. But just like in Lyme, not everybody gets that really strong acute reaction when they first get infected. And what our founder really has showed, and over the course of his decades doing research on this pathogen, is that a lot of people develop these complex chronic symptoms. And just like what I talked about with my husband, some people may have the pathogen on board, but it doesn't become an issue until they get another infection or they get something else going on. It's kind of one of those opportunistic infections that can flare and buddy up with these other pathogens and cause some major damage. And it's been associated with a lot of mental health issues. So we are over at NC State where our founder is. They've done studies that have shown the linkage to schizophrenia and psychosis, and it's been linked to PANS/PANDAS in kids where they have serious OCD and sometimes violence and rage. Really, again, you know, it can wreak some havoc with cytokines and inflammation, and in it all three of the pathogens that we work on cross the blood-brain barrier, and so they can have a real impact on mood, cognitive state, and behavior.
