How Infections and Immune Dysfunction Trigger Neuropsychiatric Symptoms
How can infections and immune dysfunction trigger neuropsychiatric symptoms?
In a subset of patients, neuropsychiatric symptoms may be driven by infection-triggered autoimmune mechanisms rather than a primary neurologic or psychiatric disorder. This underlying autoimmune component often goes unrecognized. And, as a result, many patients do not respond to standard psychiatric treatments.
How Infections Can Affect the Brain
Certain infections — including Streptococcus, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Coxsackie virus and Lyme disease, can trigger an immune response in which antibodies mistakenly target neuronal structures within the basal ganglia, a region involved in movement, behavior, and emotional regulation.
This autoimmune response can disrupt neuronal signaling and promote inflammation, contributing to symptoms such as OCD-like behaviors, tics, anxiety, mood changes and attention difficulties.
These patients are often labeled treatment-resistant and mistakenly diagnosed with a primary psychiatric, neurologic or behavioral disorder. When, in fact, they have a treatable autoimmune condition.
Evaluating Immune-Mediated Mechanisms
The Autoimmune Brain Panel™, developed over more than two decades of research, helps clinicians evaluate whether an autoimmune process may be contributing to a patient’s neuropsychiatric presentation.
Identifying an autoimmune component can inform treatment strategies that address underlying infections and immune dysfunction, rather than relying solely on 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.