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Preface

Recent immunologic, epidemiologic, microbiologic and neuropsychiatric studies point to infectious etiologies of several important neuropsychiatric disorders e.g. schizophrenia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and Tourettes disease. Additionally, several infectious diseases including human influenza virus, HIV, syphilis, and Lyme disease are associated with neuropsychiatric symptoms following transmission of infectious agents to the central nervous system of the adult individuals. An accumulation of experimental evidence also points to potential for peri-, pre-, and postnatal infections as causes for several neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, cerebral palsy, and mental retardation.

The main objective for editing this book is the near absence of a comparable book in the published literature which would cover all potential infections and immunological substrates for various neuropsychiatric disorders.

This comprehensive and integrative book examines the role that infectious agents play in the etiology of various neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, mood disorders, and obsessivecompulsive disorder. Recent advances in technology and methodology now afford a meaningful examination of the infectious etiologies of neuropsychiatric disorders. Drawing on the contributions of an international panel of experts, this work provides an unprecedented analysis of this emerging field by examining evidence from epidemiologic, serologic and animal models.

This book is the first serious attempt at enumerating experimental and clinical data regarding the infectious etiologies of several important neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, mood disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Features which make this book unique are the expertise of the authors of this book; additionally, presented data are products of years of laboratory and/or clinical studies which have been published in refereed journals.

The book is divided into eight main sections encompassing various neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, mood disorder, PANDAS, OeD, Tics and Tourettes' disease, autism, MR, cerebral palsy, dementias, anorexia and bulimia, and personality disorders. Each section is composed of epidemiological, clinical, and experimental data pertaining to each disease entity. As evident from the list of contributors, highly eminent scientists from various laboratories and scientific centers throughout the world have provided the most up to date information about infectious causes for various neuropsychiatric disorders.

It is finally hoped that this book serves as a foundation for provision of knowledge related to immunologic and infectious etiologies for neuropsychiatric disorders for all interested clinicians and neuroscientists.