Blood Drugs to Illa Prison Murderers Moved More Violent Mice

After many years as a psychiatrist, Henning Værøy has been in frequent contact with the most dangerous people in Norway. Now he has found that the immune system can contribute to aggressive behavior.

– We were looking for a biological marker that could distinguish aggressors from others, says Værøy at research.no. He is a psychiatrist and senior researcher at the Department of Psychiatric Research and Academic Development at Akershus University Hospital.

Biological markers are measurable traces in the body that researchers and physicians use to recognize a disease or condition. In collaboration with an international research group, Værøy tried to find traces of 16 people as the son of murderers and ill-treatment at the Ila prison in Oslo.

Immune system triggering violence

Værøy discovered a 2005 study associating antisocial behavior It is a protein that can bind to one of the body's hormones, which in turn regulates the concentration of cortisol in the blood. Cortisol levels increase when the body is under stress.

– The aggression itself is a strong stress response. If it turns out that the immune system interferes with the body's response to stress, this may explain why someone tends to resort to violence, "says Værøy.

Værøy contacted the researcher behind the article, Sergei Fetissov, who is professor of physiology at the University of Rouen, France. Together, they agreed to isolate antibodies from aggressive people and inject them into mice.

The goal was to determine if their immune system was separating from a control group of random people – and if that difference could be related to the aggression. The results were published at the end of June in the journal PNAS

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Experts of the Ila Prison

The first challenge of the study was to find appropriate topics. Værøy needed a group of people that he could call aggressive. At the same time, he thinks that such a division of humans is problematic.

Researcher Henning Værøy explains that antibodies against criminals differ from antibodies against random people. Photo: Frieda Wik

Researcher Henning Værøy says antibodies against criminals differ from antibodies to random people. Photo: Frieda Wik

– The aggression can be so much. It can be both physical and verbal. Some people push the aggression inward, while others let it go beyond the others. So, how to define an aggressive person? We found that it was best to let society decide by choosing people who were sentenced to prison because they did very aggressive actions, he said.

Værøy asked 16 convicted prisoners to participate in the study. Most of the sons of Ila prison in Oslo had a so-called custody verdict. This means that they have committed very violent acts and that there is a risk of repetition. Participants took blood tests and underwent tests to trace their psychological profiles

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Mice became more aggressive

in Fetissov antibodies isolated from blood and injected into mice. Mice that received a dose of immunoglobulin G aggressors became visibly more aggressive and attacked other mice faster than mice receiving antibodies from the control group

– mice underwent a reaction of aggressive stress, like criminals, says Værøy.

In addition, they found that the antibodies of the criminals behaved differently than controls in the control group when they mixed these antibodies with the stress hormone known as adrenocorticotrophic hormone, the # 39; ACTH. This may be a first step towards finding the biological marker sought by Værøy.

– Absolutely all 16 aggressive individuals separated from the control group by antibodies adhering to another area of ​​the ACTH molecule. Although the study has too few topics to conclude something bad, it's a very exciting discovery. "

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– More research can give possibilities of treatment

Værøy recognizes that the discovery is exciting by Mats Lekander Lekanderer Professor of psychoneuroimmunology at the University of Stockholm.He learned a lot about the role of the immune system in mental disorders such as depression and psychosis, but little research has been done on how changes in the immune system can lead to changes in the immune system.

Lekander noted that the pharmaceutical industry is interested in the development of psychiatric drugs for the immune system, particularly for the treatment of depression. The possibility that in the future it will be possible to deal with aggression in the same way, but stresses that in this case, much more field research will be required

– A single study like this is obviously of little clinical value. The data is so limited. First of all, we must repeat the experiment with more people and more experimental animals, so we are sure that the results are not due to coincidences. "

] The case was published originally on forskning.no