April’s life has changed thanks to Dr. Sander Markx. Plunged for 20 years in a catatonic state, the young woman wakes up after having finally received the right treatments.
At 21, April Burrell, student at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UNITED STATES) suddenly develops a psychosis. Hallucinations visual, auditory, inability to recognize loved ones, refusal to be touched… She folds in on itself And no longer communicate. The doctors characterize his condition as “catatonic” and he diagnose a severe form of schizophrenia. In 2000, the young woman was interned in a psychiatric center, the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, for long-term care. “She was the first person I saw as a patient” remember Sander Markx, then a medical student and now Director of the “Precision Psychiatry” unit at Columbia University. Next to 20 years later, in 2018, their paths crossed again. April is still bricked up in silence, she received from numerous treatments (antipsychoticselectroconvulsive therapy…) to no avail.
After intense treatment, she finally wakes up
After authorization from the family, Dr. Markx makes him undergo several examinations. A blood test reveals that his immune system produces antibodies against own body. Of the scintigraphs brain cells show that these antibodies are damaging parts of his brain. Doctors diagnose a autoimmune disease, precisely that of a lupus affecting his brain hence the clinical signs of schizophrenia. After a intense immunotherapy treatment, she “wakes up”as our colleagues from the washington post. “These are the forgotten souls. We are not only improving the lives of these people, we bring them back from a place where I didn’t think they could come back” commented Sander Markx. April was released from the hospital psychiatric hospital where she had lived for almost two decades to go to a rehabilitation center. According to Dr. Markx, it is possible that other patients have psychiatric disorders caused or exacerbated by autoimmune problems. With other doctors, he launched in April 2023 the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) at Columbia University, a center dedicated to scientific innovation and the application of precision medicine to advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness.