Brain, Behavior, and Immunity: A "magic bullet" for obsessive-compulsive patients - Imood antibodies

Introduction: 80% of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) becomes common before the age of 25, more men than womenObsessive-compulsive disorder is not uncommon in clinical practice, it is difficult and the focus in clinical workIf not diagnosed and treated in a timely and correct manner, it will seriously affect the patient's normal life and workUsually treatments are divided into medication and non-drug treatmentNormal psychotherapy can be cured, but severe medication is still neededNow, scientists have discovered a new treatment that has given compulsive sufferers a "magic bullet."scientists at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Roehampton in London found that levels of a protein called Immuno-moodulin in lymphocytes, an immune cell, in obsessive-compulsive patientsMice with high levels of this protein exhibit anxiety and stress characteristics and may have been scratching and licking hairWhen the researchers treated the mice with antibodies that neutralized Imood, the anxiety levels in the animals decreasedThe findings prompted researchers to apply for a patent application for the antibody, which is now working with a pharmaceutical company to develop a potential treatment for human patientsThe findings were published in the journal Brain, Behavior and ImmunityProfessor Fulvio D'Acquisto, professor of immunology at the University of Roehampton and emeritus professor of immunopharmacology at Queen Mary University of London, stumbled upon Imood while studying another protein called membrane-linked protein A1 (Annexin-A1) and its role in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and lupusgrowing evidence that the immune system plays an important role in mental illnessIn fact, people with autoimmune diseases have higher-than-average rates of mental illness, such as anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorderTheir findings overturn the conventional wisdom that mental illness is caused only by the central nervous systemhe created genetically modified mice and over-expressed the protein in their T cells, but found that mice showed more anxiety than normal people After analyzing the genes expressed in animal T cells, they found a particularly active gene, a protein they eventually named Immuno-moodulin or Imood their behavior returned to normal within a few days after anxious mice received antibodies that blocked Imood researchers tested the immune cells of 23 obsessive compulsive patients and 20 healthy volunteers They found that Imood's expression was about six times higher in obsessive compulsive patients other recent studies by scientists elsewhere have also found that the same protein may also play a role in attention deficit disorder (or ADHD) Imood does not directly regulate brain function in traditional ways, such as by changing the level of chemical signals in neurons Instead, it may affect brain cell genes associated with mental illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder Professor D'Acquisto estimates that the incidence of side effects of the antibody will be reduced and it could take up to five years for the treatment to be used in clinical trials researchers need to do more to see if they can replicate the observations of the few patients they saw in the study We are also working with biopharmaceutical company UCB to develop Imood antibodies for humans and learn how to use it to treat people with mental disorders Instead of traditional chemicals, psychotropic drugs can treat mental disorders and fundamentally change the lives of these patients