The interplay between an infection during pregnancy and stress in puberty plays a key role in the development of schizophrenia, as behaviourists from ETH Zurich demonstrate in a mouse model. Approximately one per cent of the population suffers from schizophrenia, a serious mental disorder that usually does not develop until adulthood and is incurable. Psychiatrists and neuroscientsist have long suspected that adverse enviromental factors may play an important role in the development of schizophrenia. Prenatal infections such as toxoplasmosis or influenza, psychological, stress or family history have all come into question as risk factors. Nevertheless, until now, researchers have been unable to identify the interplay of the individual factors linked to this serious mental disease. However, a research group headed by Dr. Urs Meyer, a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Physiology & Behaviour at ETH Zurich, has now made a breakthrough: for the first time, they were able to find clear evidence that the combination of two environmental factors contributes significantly to the development of schizophrenia-relevant brain changes and at which stages in a person's life they need to come into play for the disorder to break out. The researchers developed a special mouse model, with which they were able to simulate the processes in humans virtually in fast forward. The study has been published in the March 1, 2013 issue of Science. The first negative environmental influence that favours schizophrenia is a viral infection of the mother during the first half of the pregnancy. If a child with such a prenatal infectious history is also exposed to major stress during puberty, the probability that he or she will suffer from schizophrenia later increases markedly.Login Or Register To Read Full Story