has told a neuroscience conference in Melbourne that it's a protein produced by pregnant women to help fight infection that leads to an increased risk of the baby becoming schizophrenic or autistic.
Fellow neuroscientists say the finding is in line with other research being carried out in the field, but stress that genetic factors also play a key role in the development of mental illnesses.
PAUL PATTERSON: It appears from our work that the body's natural mechanism for fighting a virus, which includes producing proteins in the blood, some of those proteins, one in particular called Interleukin Six, is a key for altering foetal brain development that leads to these abnormal behaviours.
PAUL PATTERSON: Well in humans it's not the majority, it's an increase of about three to seven-fold over normal.
Of course not every woman who gets a cold during pregnancy will have a schizophrenic offspring, that's because of… presumably because of the genotype, you have to have a certain set of genes to be susceptible to these environmental insults.
BARBARA MILLER (Interviewer/reporter): Professor Patterson's research has not yet been accepted for publication. But Professor Ian Hickie from the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney says the findings appear to be in line with other work being carried out in the field.
IAN HICKIE (Professor, University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Research Institute.): I think it adds further to the research that has been going on in looking for the specific aspects of the immune response in the mother that may be affecting the brain development in the child.
And that's one of the strong theories in schizophrenia is that there is something in the environment that alters the brain development early on in children who later go on to develop schizophrenia in later life.
