Can You Catch Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? - New York Times

Can You Catch Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? - New York Times: "There are researchers who believe that some of this disturbing cacophony -- specifically a subset found only in children -- is caused by something familiar and common. They call it Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated With Streptococcal Infection, or, because every disease needs an acronym, Pandas. And they are certain it is brought on by strep throat -- or more specifically, by the antibodies created to fight strep throat."...

''If I were to place bets,'' says Judith Rapoport, the child psychiatrist who first brought O.C.D. to public attention with her book ''The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing,'' that bet would be on the side of those who believe in Pandas....

Pandas stands at a familiar, necessary and utterly frustrating moment in medicine -- in the gap between what doctors think and what they know. Practically every byte of scientific knowledge passes through a moment like this, on its way to being accepted as fact or dismissed as falsehood.

It has always been so, but in recent years several things about the process have changed. Science now does its thinking in public, with each incremental advance readily available online. And those waiting for answers are less patient and more involved. They don't ask their doctors; they bring their own suggestions. They don't want to wait for the results of a two-year double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial before they act.

Which means that they often find themselves acting before all the facts are in....