A study on 190,000 Danes hospitalized and treated for all kinds of serious infections, linked these diverse infections with an increased incidence of getting poorer cognition and lower IQ scores, post infections.
This Scandinavian study showed that people with 5 or more hospital contacts with infections had an IQ score of 9.44 points lower than the average!
That’s a huge dumbing down of thought processing.
The study showed a clear dose-response relationship between the number and severity of infections to the effects on cognitive ability. Infections in the brain affected the cognitive ability the most, but many other types of infections severe enough to require hospitalization also impaired patient’s cognitive ability (and even mood.)
Moreover, it seems that the immune system itself can affect the brain to such an extent that the person’s cognitive ability measured by an IQ test will also be impaired many years after the infection has been cured.
I think it is more probable that the reduction in cognition is secondary to the antibiotics given and their adverse effect on the microbiome, whose status has been directly linked to cognition capabilities.
In the future, a person with awareness and funds will get IVs for glutathione, alpha lipoic acid and other natural infection fighters, instead of antibiotics, and perhaps preserve their gray matter and attentional qualities.
We are seeing more and more the adverse side effects of drugs and these epidemiologic studies are not teasing apart the issues from the treatments.
And there you have it.
Michael Eriksen Benros, Holger Jelling Sørensen, Philip Rising Nielsen, Merete Nordentoft, Preben Bo Mortensen, Liselotte Petersen. The Association between Infections and General Cognitive Ability in Young Men – A Nationwide Study. PLOS ONE, 2015; 10 (5): e0124005 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124005