Bornaviruses do not play a role in schizophrenia or mood disorders

Over the past 30 years, numerous studies have linked Borna disease virus (BDV) with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, and dementia. Genetic fragments and antibodies to this RNA virus, which causes behavior disorders in a range of mammals and birds, have been found to be prevalent in psychiatric patients, but study results have been inconsistent. Now, the first blinded, case-control study to examine this issue finds no association between the virus and psychiatric illness.
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"Our study provides compelling evidence that bornaviruses do not play a role in schizophrenia or mood disorders," says Mady Hornig, MD, director of translational research at the Center for Infection and Immunity.

In a commentary in the same issue of the journal, Michael B.A. Oldstone, MD, an expert in molecular virology and central nervous system infections at the Scripps Research Institute, observes that the design and experimental procedures carried out in the Hornig study provide a gold standard for investigating links between persistent viral infection and human disease.

CII director, W. Ian Lipkin, MD, senior author of the paper, notes that "it was concern over the potential role of BDV in mental illness and the inability to identify it using classical techniques that led us to develop molecular methods for pathogen discovery. Ultimately these new techniques enabled us to refute a role for BDV in human disease. But the fact remains that we gained strategies for the discovery of hundreds of other pathogens that have important implications for medicine, agriculture, and environmental health."