Antibody Levels to Herpes Simplex Type 1, Measles and Rubella Viruses in Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

The systematic search of aetiological agents from a variety of slowly progressing or subacute neurological diseases has revealed causative viruses or virus-like agents from kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease and other forms of presenile dementias, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, progressive multifocal encephalopathy, and from many similar neurological diseases in animals (Gajdusek and Gibbs, 1973; Gajdusek, 1973). The first two diseases called subacute spongiform virus encephalopathies (Gajdusek and Gibbs, 1971) have many interesting features including heredo-familial occurrence and totally non-inflammatory neuropathology. Thus the epidemiology of these diseases is not typical for diseases with infectious aetiology, and the histopathological studies do not suggest the presence of extremely high-titred infectious material in brain cells.