Immune Reaction Linked to OCD
Brody Kennedy was a typical sixth-grader who loved to hang out with friends and play video games. A strep-throat infection in October caused him to miss a couple of days of school, but he was eager to rejoin his classmates, recalls his mother, Tracy.
Then, a week after Brody became ill, he awoke one morning to find his world was no longer safe. Paranoid about germs and obsessed with cleanliness, he refused to touch things and showered several times a day. His fear prevented him from attending school, and he insisted on wearing nothing but a sheet or demanding that his mother microwave his clothes or heat them in the dryer before dressing.
“The whole area of mental illness caused by infections is being looked at more closely because of PANDAS,” says Dr. Michael A. Jenike, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “If you can prevent lifelong suffering by using antibiotics or some acute intervention, that would be huge.”
No one knows what portion of obsessive-compulsive disorder cases may be tied to PANDAS — or even how prevalent the condition may be, Jenike says.
“I used to think it was exceedingly rare,” he says. “Now I think it’s exceedingly common.”
