Science / Medicine : Schizophrenia Link to Flu Found

A new British study reported in The Lancet bolsters a theory that people whose mothers were exposed to the flu when they were in the womb may face a greater risk of developing schizophrenia. Researchers in Helsinki, Finland, in 1988 reported that people who were in their second trimester of development during a 1957 influenza epidemic appeared to be at increased risk for developing schizophrenia.

Subsequent studies reported in 1989 and 1990 in Scotland and the United States, however, failed to find such a relationship.

About 1% of the population--3 million Americans--will develop schizophrenia at some point. The cause is unknown and there is no cure. Research has shown that people born in late winter and early spring appear more likely to develop schizophrenia than those born at other times of the year--an effect that appears most striking among people without a previous family history of the disorder.

In the new study, researchers from the King’s College and Westminster hospitals in London compared 339 schizophrenics born in England and Wales during a 1957 flu epidemic with 1,331 born in the two previous and subsequent years. Five months after the flu epidemic’s peak, the number of schizophrenics born was 88% greater than the average number of schizophrenics born during the same period in the other years.