Schizophrenia

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A clinical psychologist hired by the defense told a federal jury yesterday that admitted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic who began to lose his ability to reason a decade ago, when he first embraced radical Muslim extremism in England. All day long the mental health expert from New York testified, describing for the defense his bizarre jailhouse interview with Moussaoui in which the 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent talked to himself and spat water at anyone who came near.

There was a time not long ago when psychiatric hospitals doled out cigarettes as rewards for good behavior. Outpatient clinics were thick with smoke, and patients smoked butts down to yellow-stained fingers. Laws in Maryland and other states banished tobacco from hospitals and health clinics in the late 1990s, but smoking rates among the severely mentally ill - especially those with schizophrenia and bipolar illness - remain two to three times higher than among the general population. Though surely not the only cause, the smoking rates correspond with similarly high rates of diabetes and heart and lung disease among the mentally ill. People with severe mental afflictions also die about 10 years earlier than others - and suicide accounts for only a fraction of the difference.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20): Governed by Neptune and symbolized by the fish. Compassionate, introspective, artistic. Often dreamy and impractical. May be prone to schizophrenia, epilepsy or bipolar disorder. It may sound like some kind of new, madcap astrology, but a number of scientists are becoming convinced that our birth month may predispose us to particular diseases later in life. Studies have shown that schizophrenia is more common among those born in late winter or early spring. Multiple sclerosis is associated with births in April, May and June.

A woman's battle with a virus such as flu during pregnancy might put her child at risk for schizophrenia later in life, new research suggests. Scientists at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons tested blood taken from thousands of pregnant women in 1959 through 1966. The blood of mothers whose children later developed the disabling mental illness had high levels of interleukin-8, an inflammatory chemical that fights infection. The finding strengthens the researchers' earlier work, presented last year at the Society of Biological Psychiatry meeting.

A new study has found that a faulty sense of smell may predict precisely the risk of schizophrenia, months or years before obvious symptoms appear. Until now, doctors have had no reliable way to make an early diagnosis of the debilitating mental illness, which afflicts more than 2 million Americans. "This is the first time we've found a potential marker specifically for schizophrenia. It's a promising diagnostic tool," said University of Melbourne neuropsychologist Dr. Warrick Brewer, one of the study's co-authors.

Patricia S. Goldman-Rakic, 66, a professor of neuroscience at Yale University whose pioneering research on brain and memory functions helped pave the way for understanding schizophrenia and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, died Thursday in New Haven, Conn. She died of complications from head and other injuries suffered two days earlier when she was struck by a car as she crossed a street in Hamden, Conn., said her husband, Dr. Pasko Rakic, a fellow Yale neuroscientist. Dr. Goldman-Rakic was the first researcher to chart the frontal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for personality, reasoning, planning, insight and other high-order cognitive functions.

LOS ANGELES - Candid friends of Phil Spector admit that the bodyguards who prowled the night with the famed record producer were really in the business of protecting him from one dangerous person - himself. So it's telling that, five months ago, Spector apparently decided that the wild life was so far behind him that he didn't need a shadow. He came to that decision at a shining, hopeful moment in his life. His friends say he had been sober for three years and far removed from the old days when he was notorious as a raging, erratic genius with a penchant for guns.

Dr. Godfrey Pearlson and his colleagues at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., hope one day they will be able to look at the image of a living brain and know whether it will be tormented by the delusions of schizophrenia. "It's possible that the brains of schizophrenics are damaged before their illness becomes evident," said Pearlson, who was recruited from Johns Hopkins University to head the new $20 million Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center at the institute. "We want to find people before they experience symptoms of psychosis."

Otsuka made a big splash when it spurned other offers and became one of the first companies to announce that it would build in Montgomery County's new life sciences business park. That was 1983. The Japanese company has been relatively quiet since then, though a large cluster of biotechnology companies grew up around it. But Otsuka's relative obscurity in Maryland may be about to end. Thanks largely to its just-approved schizophrenia drug Abilify, Otsuka America Pharmaceutical Inc. could soon be in the same league with MedImmune Inc., which expects revenue to reach $816 million this year.

With the summer only half over and Baltimore settling into a mental fog as thick as the haze shrouding its buildings, health authorities are issuing a warning that they hope will be taken seriously: Heat kills. It killed Haden Skinner, an 86-year-old man who lived alone and was inclined to sit in his Brooklyn apartment with the windows shut and an electric fan recycling hot air. When he was discovered dead in his recliner July 5, the indoor temperature measured 95 degrees. It killed Gloria Turner, 67, who became ill after waking recently in a 104-degree rowhouse in lower Charles Village.