THE brains of monkeys whose mothers had flu while pregnant resemble those of people with schizophrenia. The finding backs up studies in people that suggest flu in mothers-to-be affects the brain of the developing fetus.
Previous research had found that the children of women who caught flu while pregnant are more likely to develop schizophrenia later in life. To investigate further, Sarah Short and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, infected 12 pregnant rhesus monkeys with mild flu.
Their 19 offspring seemed to develop normally. Yet MRI scans of the 1-year-old juveniles 鈥� equivalent in age to a 5 to 7-year-old human child 鈥� revealed that their brains had features similar to those seen in people with schizophrenia, including less grey matter in the cortex and enlarged ventricles. Monkeys whose mothers had not had flu did not have these features (Biological Psychiatry, ).
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The team will now monitor the monkeys for behaviour similar to that seen in schizophrenia. In the meantime, Coe advises would-be mothers to get seasonal flu shots.
鈥淭he implication for people is that if women are planning to get pregnant it makes more sense being immunised in advance rather than risking having a bad flu infection when pregnant,鈥� Coe says.
The finding has impressed at Columbia University in New York, who studies the link between maternal flu and psychiatric illness in humans. He says that seeing schizophrenia-like anomalies in the brain of a closely related primate 鈥渞eally enhances the plausibility鈥� of previous research that links flu to fetal brain development in humans.
