American teen has developed schizophrenia after cat scratching
'28.03.2019'
Source: Medinfo
Cat scratches in an 14-year-old teenager from the United States caused Bartonella henselae to become infected with bacteria, and as a result, he developed symptoms of severe schizophrenia. Scratches were obtained from the domestic cat's claws.
In 2015, in a family where a teenager was growing up, they noticed that he had changed a lot - parents considered that their son had a teenage depression, writes Medinfo. The guy began to show a bad mood and flashes of aggressive attitude towards relatives. Then he began to speak, his speech increasingly reflected uncontrollable impulsive streams of consciousness.
When a teenager was hospitalized after a spontaneous suicide attempt, doctors diagnosed him with a depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms. He spent some time in the clinic, and his condition improved. But soon after discharge, the negative symptoms returned with triple strength.
The teenager began to show auditory, tactile and visual hallucinations, he began to fear the pursuit of otherworldly forces, ceased to follow basic rules of hygiene, began to urinate under him. Then another appeal to specialists followed, and those diagnosed with schizophrenia.
For more than a year after that, a teenager with a severe, as it turned out, form of schizophrenia, was treated with serious drugs - antidepressants, antipsychotics, antibiotics. But drug therapy did not give the desired effect. In 2016, parents noticed that their son's body had strange skin lesions. They made an appointment with a new specialist, who, after examining the patient, suggested that he was faced with a case of neurobartonellosis, an infection provoked by the bacterium Bartonella henselae. The teenager was sent for examination at Carolina State University. His diagnosis was confirmed: after cat scratches, neurobartonellosis developed, the symptoms of which took the form of severe schizophrenia.
In the 2017 year, after a course of antifungal drugs and antibiotics, the teenager was completely cured. Now he, as parents believe, has fully recovered.
