Bone marrow transplants are usually used to care for life-threatening diseases like leukemia. But a team of researchers led by a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist recently used the practice to rid mice of a psychiatric disorder - a discovery that could have huge implications for the field of mental health.The mice suffered from a compulsion to groom excessively, to the point they would expand patches of bare skin. This is similar to a human condition called trichotillomania, a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder that cause people to pull their hair out.
"All animals spend a lot of time grooming, and what they are doing is removing pathogens," explained Mario Capecchi, a geneticist from the University of Utah who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2007 for his job on mouse genetics.For people with this type of disorder, grooming goes overboard. Capecchi used the example of people who wash their hands awaiting they bleed.
"They are not getting the feedback that says, 'Oh, my hands are clean. I can stop.'" Capecchi wondered if the disorder goes beyond psychology, and is the result of defective immune cells.Sure enough, the researchers discover that microgilia - immune cells that rid the brain of dead cells - were not functioning properly in the mice.They seemed to be communicating with synapses in the brain and affecting behaviour - something not thought probable.
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