Lead Exposure Shown to Trigger Schizophrenia
Posted by News Editor
NEW YORK, New York, June 5, 2013 (ENS) – For the first time, an experiment on animals shows that exposure to the environmental toxin lead could cause people to develop the severe mental disorder schizophrenia.
Scientists at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine engineered mice with a human gene for schizophrenia and exposed them to lead early in their lives. The mice showed behaviors and structural changes in their brains consistent with schizophrenia.
Their findings appear online in the current issue of the journal “Schizophrenia Bulletin” in an article entitled, “Chronic Exposure of Mutant DISC1 Mice to Lead Produces Sex-Dependent Abnormalities Consistent With Schizophrenia and Related Mental Disorders: A Gene-Environment Interaction Study.”[snip]
Back in 2004, work by Dr. Guilarte and other scientists at the Mailman School suggested a connection between prenatal lead exposure in humans and increased risk for schizophrenia later in life. But the scientists still wondered how lead exposure could trigger the disease.
Dr. Guilarte believed the answer was in the direct inhibitory effect of lead on the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, NMDAR, a connection point in the brain important to brain development, learning, and memory.
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“We’re just scratching the surface,” says Dr. Guilarte. “We used lead in this study, but there are other environmental toxins that disrupt the function of the NMDAR.”
Another set of possible culprits is a family of chemicals in air pollution called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. PAHs occur in oil, coal, and tar deposits, and are produced as byproducts of fuel burning, whether fossil fuel or biomass. Studies have shown that high levels of PAHs are found in meat cooked at high temperatures such as grilling or barbecuing, and in smoked fish.
AHs are of concern because some compounds have been identified as carcinogenic and mutagenic. PAHs also are known to cause physical defects in a developing embryo...
