Abstract
Schizophrenia is of mysterious causation. It is not infectious, not congenital, but shows familial aggregation, the Mendelian genetics indicating involvement of multiple codominant genes with incomplete penetrance. This is the pattern for autoimmune diseases, such as Graves' disease of the thyroid, where forbidden clones of B lymphocytes develop, and cause thyrotoxicosis by secreting autoantibodies that react with the thyroid gland's receptor for thyroid-stimulating hormone from the pituitary gland. In 1982, Knight postulated that autoantibodies affecting the function of neurons in the limbic region of the brain are a possible cause of schizophrenia. Today, this is even more probable, with genes predisposing to schizophrenia having being found to be immune response genes, one in the MHC and two for antibody light chain V genes. Immune response genes govern the immune repertoire, dictating the genetic risk of autoimmune diseases. The simplest test for an autoimmune basis of schizophrenia would be trial of immunosuppression with prednisone in acute cases. The urgent research need is to find the microbial trigger, as done by Ebringer for rheumatoid arthritis and for ankylosing spondylitis. This could lead to prophylaxis of schizophrenia by vaccination against the triggering microbe.
Highlights
Louis Pasteur’s epochal Germ Theory of Disease [1] triggered the fastest advance of medicine ever
Widely neglected is Burnet’s important Forbidden Clone Theory [14], postulating that autoimmune disease is caused by somatic mutation in lymphocytes multiplying in response to a microbial antigenic stimulus
Details of the development of the methods used for successful determination of the amino acid sequences of antigens on the autoimmune disease-triggering bacteria, Proteus mirabilis and Klebsiella pneumoniae, are recorded in the book Rheumatoid Arthritis and Proteus by Ebringer [47]
Summary
Louis Pasteur’s epochal Germ Theory of Disease [1] triggered the fastest advance of medicine ever. The great host of infectious diseases, with their aetiology at last discovered, was soon substantially conquered. In stark contrast to the infectious diseases the autoimmune diseases, have been a cinderella of Medicine. Coombs and Gell’s classification of harmful immune responses [3] was preautoimmunity, antediluvian, based on the misapprehension that Paul Ehrlich’s “horror autotoxicus” dictum was based on proof that autoimmunity never occurs. The independent demonstration of autoimmunity in four different laboratories [5,6,7,8,9] made Coombs and Gell’s classification obviously wrong, yet it lingered on for decades [10] as an inhibition to clarity of thought.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
