From Archived Brains to Future Psychiatry: Revealing the role of infection in mental health
One of five projects under the new SUND Collaborates initiatives by the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, goes to Associate Professor Sandra Breum Andersen from Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics. Her collaborative project gets 4 million as part of the new seed-funding programme supporting innovative collaborations across departments
Could infections in the brain be the missing link in psychiatric illness?
Mental health disorders are a leading cause of global disability, yet their biological origins remain poorly understood. While research has centered on neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, growing evidence points to infection and immune response. Before antibiotics, syphilis invading the brain (neurosyphilis) caused by Treponema pallidum accounted for one-third of psychiatric hospitalisations, and its treatment with penicillin remains a clear example of infection driving mental illness.
Today, epidemiological studies show infections and immune disturbances increase the risk of schizophrenia, depression, and other disorders, but direct molecular studies have been limited by lack of suitable material.
Innovative collaboration
Together with PIs Thomas Bjarnsholt, Department of Immunology and Microbiology and Christina Jacobsen, Retsmedicinsk Sandra will explore infection’s role in mental health.
This project leverages the Danish Brain Collection, the world’s largest archive of brains from psychiatric patients (1945–1982), when neurosyphilis was prevalent, to establish proof-of-concept for infection-based models of mental illness.
In parallel, the project embeds ethics, since the collection was assembled without consent standards. Together with ethicists, clinicians, patient representatives, and museums, we will engage the public through debates, podcasts, and exhibitions. Additionally, the project will establish a new interdisciplinary position in neuroinfection at SUND, linking psychiatry, infection biology, pathology, and ethics.
By reframing psychiatric disease as partly systemic and biological, the project may reduce stigma while opening pathways to new diagnostic markers and therapies. It will engage the public on the ethics of using archival material, ensuring marginalized patients from the past continue to educate the living and shape future mental health care.
Read more about this project and the four other funded projects here.
Contact
Associate Professor Sandra Breum Andersen