Treatment of Childhood Onset Psychiatric Disorders With Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIg)

Launched by NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH (NIMH) · Dec 9, 2002

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

Recent developments in the study of early-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette's syndrome have implicated an autoimmune etiology in a subset of these conditions, and renewed interest into the possibility of autoimmune pathophysiology underlying other psychiatric disorders. There are several clinical and epidemiologic similarities between autoimmune diseases and schizophrenia: genetic predisposition, but with twin concordance below 50%; waxing and waning course; exacerbation of symptoms or precipitation of relapse by psychosocial stress. However, other mixed evidence has en...

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• • Patients will be recruited from both professional referrals and patient advocacy sources, subject to medical and psychiatric screening.
• • Children and adolescents will be sought who meet DSM-III-R and DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia, with onset of psychotic symptoms before age twelve, and who have no concurrent substance abuse disorders or other active medical conditions. In addition, they will have failed adequate trials of at least two typical neuroleptics, and not benefited from either olanzapine or clozapine.