The Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry

2012

 

Volume 12, Number 1, pp. 11–18

 

 

 

Disclosure of the major causes of mental illness—mitochondrial deterioration in brain neurons via opportunistic infection

Katsunari Nishihara

President of the Nishihara Institute, Hara Bldg 3F, 6-2-5 Roppongi, Minato-Ku, Tokyo, Japan

In conventional medicine psychoses are accepted to be quite different maladies from common intractable immune diseases, carcinomas or infectious maladies. From the viewpoint of cellular respiration of mitochondria, the author has investigated aging as well as malady conditions of cerebral neurons, hypothesizing them to be due to mitochondrial deterioration in neurons via intracellular infection by nonpathogenic common enteromicrobes induced by some anomalous energy (temperature) condition in the gut. By such intracellular infection, at first protein synthesis in the cytoplasm is disturbed, which induces mitochondrial mutation or other anomalies. Consequently, disturbance of the metabolic pathways of biogenic amines in mitochondria occurs, engendering the characteristic symptoms of psychoses. Integrating biomechanics, molecular biology, physiology, developmental morphology and clinical therapeutic research, the author reveals that psychoses are mere organ (brain neuron)-specific immune diseases, viz., intracellular infection via nonpathogenic common enteromicrobes, which bring about mitochondrial deterioration concomitant with the disturbance of monoamine metabolism in brain neurons. This paper also discusses the essential mitochondrial function of cellular life activity, namely remodelling to overcome aging.

Keywords: energy metabolism, intracellular infection, intractable immune disease, mitochondrial deterioration, monoamine, negative feedback regulation system, opportunistic infection, psychosis

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