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Gluten & Schizophrenia

Jun 8, 2011 | By Rebecca Bragg
Gluten & Schizophrenia
Photo Credit George Doyle/Stockbyte/Getty Images

Schizophrenia is a severe neuropsychiatric disease characterized by delusions, hallucinations and difficulty distinguishing between reality and imagination. Celiac disease is an autoimmune digestive disorder triggered by gluten, proteins found in wheat, barley and rye. Each disease affects about 1 percent of the population but scientific studies suggest that there might be a genetic connection between them. The evidence is not yet conclusive but reports in medical literature have documented drastic reductions -- sometimes even full remission -- of symptoms after schizophrenic patients started gluten-free diets.

Schizophrenia, Celiac Disease and Genetics

The completion of the 13-year-long Human Genome Project in 2003 ushered in a new era of medical research, making it possible to compare the genetic makeup of healthy people with those suffering from various disorders and map the differences. Scientists have long known that celiac disease is caused by genetic abnormalities that can run in your family but the association between schizophrenia and inheritable genetic markers is a more recent discovery. A large study published in the March 2006 issue of the "American Journal of Psychiatry" found that people with a history of any autoimmune disorder were at 45 percent greater risk of developing schizophrenia, but celiac disease was among the few mentioned specifically.

Genetic Mutations

One area of genetic research that holds special promise involves copy number variants (CNV) within chromosomes, mutations in which a key piece of DNA is either missing or duplicated. An international study involving researchers from leading American teaching hospitals and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, scanned the genomes of 8,290 schizophrenics and compared them to controls. The resulting article, published on February 23, 2011 in "Nature," reported that certain CNV duplications were 14 times higher in schizophrenics, affecting blood levels of a chemical called vasoactive intestinal peptide. VIP helps regulate the activity of neurons both in your brain and intestinal tract and, as noted in a study published in the July 10, 2010 issue of the "Journal of Neuroinflammation," is also implicated in celiac disease.

Compelling Case

A 70-year-old obese woman, severely schizophrenic since childhood, was put on a high-fat, low-carbohydrate, gluten-free diet to lose weight but reaped more benefits than her astonished doctors at Duke University's Medical Center were expecting. After only eight days of dieting, she was no longer hearing voices or hallucinating. Twelve months later, still following a low-carbohydrate diet, she remained symptom-free. Writing about this case in the February 26, 2009 issue of "Nutrition & Metabolism," her doctors emphasized that there had been no other changes in her treatment or her life that could have accounted for this dramatic turnaround.

Relieves Symptoms

At the University of the Highlands and Islands in Inverness, Scotland, funding from the Schizophrenia Association of Great Britain has been supporting two research projects involving schizophrenia and gluten intolerance. According to senior researcher Jun Wei, a geneticist, gluten may act as a trigger for psychotic symptoms in the 30 percent of schizophrenics who test positive for celiac-associated antibodies. Some researchers theorize that schizophrenia, like celiac disease, has an autoimmune component, and advocate testing schizophrenics for the antibodies revealing gluten intolerance. Authors of a study published in 2006 in "Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica" wrote that although more research is needed, "gluten withdrawal may serve as a safe and economical alternative for reduction of symptoms" in some patients.

References

Article reviewed by Knuckles Last updated on: Jun 8, 2011

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