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October 15, 2015 is a date that is seared in Kathleen Brady Stimpert’s memory forever. That was the day her Harry Potter-obsessed 5-year-old son, Sawyer, completely changed. “I came home from work and found Sawyer in the bathroom,” she says. “My parents were in town, and he wouldn’t let anyone touch him; he kept scrubbing his arms and legs, saying, ‘I feel like there are germs all over me.'”

All three of Kerry Henrikson’s children were diagnosed with pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcus — better known as PANDAS — leading to frequent hospital visits and prescriptions for drugs that didn’t seem to work. Symptoms of the disease often look common enough to be diagnosed as mental health conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder, or infections like strep throat. Unsurprisingly, treatment for those more-common conditions do not help children suffering from PANDAS.

Only after a Chatham doctor diagnosed Henrikson’s children with the disease did the mother begin to see a change.

Henrikson’s story is known around Sarnia. Soon it will be known by people around the world thanks to the UK-based Liftoff Global Network, a virtual film festival hosting Stolen Childhood and others on their site from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20

New research from Johns Hopkins Medicine and Sheppard Pratt Health System shows that people in the study with schizophrenia also have higher levels of antibodies against the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a herpes virus that causes infectious mononucleosis, so-called mono.

Researchers have traced a connection between some infections and mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder. New research from Denmark bolsters that connection. The study, published Thursday in JAMA Psychiatry, shows that a wide variety of infections, even common ones like bronchitis, are linked to a higher risk of many mental illnesses in children and adolescents.

Jacky Sullivan could only watch through the window in a locked door as her teenaged daughter, Becky, was led away until she disappeared down a long corridor. It was a point that had been reached after much hardship and pain, but before anyone realized that Becky’s violent attacks against herself and against her mother were cries that needed medical attention, not psychiatric treatment.

Similar to hearing a song that triggers reflections on events long past in one’s life, reading this month’s review article on Group A Streptococcus(GAS) by Drs. Dietrich and Steele prompted memories of my own episodes with this determined bacterium.

Dear Doctor,

I’m sure you’re aware that back in 2012, PANS (Pediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) was formally proposed and described in a white paper by a small handful of physicians who had extensive expertise in PANDAS. While this was welcome news to those who recognized that the neuropsychiatric features seen in PANDAS were also seen in the absence of strep, the decision to focus on acute onset in children over the age of two was not based upon any biomarker or science that would lend credibility to the theory that the pathogenesis of the described syndrome was unique solely to children meeting the diagnostic criteria set forth in the paper.

‘She won’t let me touch her clothes, she says we are contaminated’: Mother of girl who developed psychosis from a strep infection describes agony of living with the mystery condition.”

A new study, led by Dr. Lorenza Putignani from the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome (Italy), has found that gut microbiota may promote gut inflammation and activation of an immune response in PANS/PANDAS patients.

The researchers collected three fecal samples over consecutive days and, using 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA)-based metagenomics, they analyzed the gut microbiota composition of a cohort of 30 PANS/PANDAS patients aged 4-16 years (20 males and 10 females), comparing them with 70 healthy controls.

A far-reaching study conducted by scientists at Cincinnati Children’s reports that the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)—best known for causing mononucleosis—also increases the risks for some people of developing seven other major diseases.