How Infections Trigger Neuropsychiatric Illnesss
Could the immune system be driving neuropsychiatric symptoms?
Patients with infection-triggered autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders are frequently misdiagnosed with primary psychiatric or neurologic conditions — when, in fact, they may have an underlying, treatable immune-mediated illness.
How Infections Can Disrupt the Brain
Common infections such as strep, mycoplasma pneumoniae, and coxsackie virus can trigger the immune system to produce antibodies to destroy harmful pathogens (i.e., bacteria, viruses, fungi). However, in some individuals, this immune response becomes misdirected.
Instead of targeting only the infection, the immune system produces autoantibodies that mistakenly attack healthy brain tissue, particularly in a region called the basal ganglia — an area involved in motor control, behavior, emotions, and executive function.
This immune attack can lead to brain inflammation and disrupt signaling between neurons and receptors, resulting in the sudden or progressive onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms including:
Only test of its kind
The Autoimmune Brain Panel™, backed by more than two decades of research, is the only test of its kind that can assist clinicians in diagnosing and treating immune-mediated neuropsychiatric disorders.
Identifying an autoimmune process is important, since treatment focuses on eradicating the infection(s) and supporting the immune system, rather than treating solely with psychotropic medications.
Webinar Schedule
About The Webinar
This presentation will review the biological process that occurs when infections trigger an immune dysfunction, impacting the brain and leading to the onset of various neurologic and psychiatric symptoms.
We will describe the signs and symptoms that may help identify whether an individual may be suffering from an autoimmune dysfunction versus a primary psychiatric disorder.
We will also review how the Autoimmune Brain Panel™ can assist in determining whether symptoms may be due to an autoimmune response and highlight several cases of patients who tested positive on the Panel and were successfully treated with a resolution in symptoms.
Webinar Presenter
Craig Shimasaki, PhD, MBA
Craig Shimasaki is President and CEO of Moleculera Biosciences, a neuroimmunology precision medicine company focused on identifying underlying roots of neurologic, psychiatric, and behavioral disorders triggered by an autoimmune response. He is a medical research scientist with over 35 years of translational development experience in biochemical interactions, molecular biology, viral pathogenesis and infection-triggered neuropsychiatric disorders.
Dr. Shimasaki has worked at all stages of research and development from bench to bedside. His research included epitope mapping of HIV proteins, genetic based risk predictors of breast cancer, influenza and RSV diagnostics and therapeutics and pathogenesis of infection triggered neuropsychiatric disorders. As a businessperson, he co-founded multiple companies and led multiple products through the FDA approval process and is a co-inventor on multiple patents.
Dr. Shimasaki started his career at Genentech. He received his BS in Biochemistry from University of California at Davis, his PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Tulsa, and his MBA from Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Business. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Oklahoma where he teaches biotechnology entrepreneurship. His passion is to help translate scientific and medical discoveries into acutely needed products so that more patients can live healthier lives.