Does eating dried beef cause psychiatric symptoms? Not so fast.

A new study reveals that people with bipolar disorder who eat pepperoni, sausage and other dried meats may have a higher risk of developing a mania, a mental state characterized by an intensely positive mood, high energy, confusion and disconnection from reality.

Even stranger? The researchers did not expect to find that at all.

But you do not yet need to give up cold cuts: The researchers noted that the results showed only an association between processed meats and manic episodes – the new research did not prove the cause and the effect. [10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Brain]

The new article, published today (July 18) in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, describes three related studies conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. and Sheppard Pratt Health System, both in Baltimore. ] For the first study, researchers did not even intend to examine deli meats, said study co-author Faith Dickerson, director of the Stanley Research Program at Sheppard Pratt Health System. It began when the researchers asked patients presenting to the clinic with various serious psychiatric disorders a very long series of questions about their lives. In this long list of questions – in what Dickerson said Live Science was not intended to be a central part of the study, but rather complete to complete the questionnaire – was whether patients had already ate cured meats. They asked the same questions to people who had no psychiatric disorder.

When the researchers looked at about ten questionnaire responses, between 2007 and 2017, they noticed that patients with bipolar mania turned out to answer "yes" to this question much more often than patients with dementia. other disorders (such as bipolar depression or schizophrenia) or people who have not been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. (In total, they examined the responses of about 1,000 people.) The effect was so strong that answering "yes" to the healed meat issue increased about 3.5 times the likelihood that patients are part of the group of manias.

Thus, they did a follow-up study, which undertook to replicate and flesh out the original results. In this second study, researchers interviewed 40 other people about psychiatric symptoms and meat intake, and found similar results.

Finally, in a third study, researchers sought to identify the ingredients of deli meats. To do this, they fed the salted meats to the rats and observed which ingredients led to the hyperactivity. The hyperactivity in the rat is not the same as the mania in humans, but the researchers chose to study it because it 's the equivalent the closest

(The CEO of the company that provided the meats author of the study, however, this person played no role in the design or funding of the research.)

Researchers found that nitrate preservatives in dried meats appeared to increase the most hyperactivity in rats compared to other ingredients. It is therefore possible, according to the researchers, that these same ingredients have played a role in the symptoms of human patients, although more research is needed to confirm this.

Indeed, Kellie Tamashiro, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who worked on the study in rats, noted that rats are far from analogous perfect of the human being. What happened to rats fed salty meats may not be translated into humans, she told Live Science.

Yet, there is reason to believe that nitrates could affect human brain function. The author Bob Yolken, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Medicine who worked on the analysis of the questionnaire data, told Live Science

There are other reasons to be wary of These results: In an exploratory study with many different, unrelated issues, the odds of a false positive are higher, the question of "never" eating salty meats was quite vague and the population total study was rather small for this type of research. The three researchers who spoke at Live Science said this result should pave the way for further, more in-depth research on the subject – not to make people panic about their pepperoni consumption.