mood: crabby
last night's sleep rating: D
rounds start in: 10 minutes

note to self: Have Cameron research this and present. This is really interesting:

Scientists have long believed schizophrenia to be a disease that lies dormant, waiting for the right set of circumstances to strike its teenage or young adult victims. Whether genetic, biological, or environmental -- or some complex mix -- the precise nature of the early defect remains largely undetermined, although the disease affects some 2 million Americans.

Now researchers believe that a viral remnant long ago incorporated into the genetic makeup of all humans -- like a footprint frozen in the winter snow -- is brought to life in some individuals, leading to a cascade of events that can result in schizophrenia, a mental illness that causes delusions and hallucinations.

And what may be responsible for activating that viral remnant is another infection, say researchers in a report that appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

For the footprint is really a retrovirus -- a virus that carries genetic material found in all human cells. And the particular retrovirus they identified is believed to have infected humans so long ago that it became a part of the very genetic makeup of humans, a bit of dormant "junk" in the human genome.

Yet, when they looked at the fluid bathing the brains of patients with schizophrenia, they found something remarkable: evidence that the retrovirus had become active. Virus Provides a Clue to the Cause of Schizophrenia