News

Solving a medical mystery – Thank you for making people aware of the concept that strep infections can cause sudden onset of obsessive/compulsive disorder in children [“Little boy, big fears,” Sept. 27. ]

The phenomenon of PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections) results in serious behavioral and emotional changes. Countless children and families suffer needlessly, pursuing treatments that can’t be effective until antibiotics are prescribed.

As stated in the article, many cases of OCD develop slowly and are not attributable to PANDAS. But when onset is sudden and dramatic, why not rule out PANDAS by conducting a blood test and administering a trial course of antibiotics?

Christina Teague barely had time to react as her son, Will, lunged for the door of her car full of children, trying to wrench it open while yelling frantically, “I’ve got to get out!” Teague managed to pull to the side of the winding country road near their Charlottesville home as Will, nearly 8, leapt out of the car.

“He kept saying, ‘The car smells funny,’ and refused to get back in,” Teague recalled, astonished that her normally self-possessed second-grader would fall apart in front of his little sister and her friends, who stared, goggle-eyed, from the back seat. When Teague’s efforts at reassurance failed, she called her husband, who left work. After an hour, Will’s father managed to coax their son into his car, and they drove home.

That November 2007 episode was the first of Will’s bizarre and inexplicable meltdowns; it would not be the last. For the next 16 months specialists in three states offered various explanations for why Will had suddenly morphed from a sociable, well-adjusted kid into a fearful boy so beset by crippling obsessions that he refused to sleep alone, go to school or even play with the family dog. “We went from having a fun-loving, independent 8-year-old to a child who was more like a 2- or 3-year-old,” his mother recalled.

Ever wonder why just the right person comes into your life at just the right moment sometimes? I think everybody has experienced this at one point or another; isn’t it a wonderful thing when it happens?

I met Beth Maloney about two years ago when she contacted me after reading my book, “Becoming Whole” about my recovery from invasive breast cancer (after losing my leg to bone cancer). At that time she shared a copy of her own book with me “Saving Sammy” about her son’s incredible odyssey to regain his health. Beth and I found that we had a lot in common and became good friends.

When a well-adjusted, happy child suddenly begs not to be touched, won’t eat certain foods, refuses to bathe or suffers from a personality transformation that could only be described as bizarre, an increasing body of evidence suggests that an infection could be to blame.

The infection is strep, and the condition it appears to trigger in a small number of children is called PANDAS—short for pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder.