Essential
- Beth suddenly changed her behavior when she was 13 years old. She started to be violent towards her mother, to no longer recognize her loved ones or to have irrational thoughts.
- After months of medical wandering, her family discovered that she was suffering from a sides.
- It is a neuropsychiatric disorder in children linked to an autoimmune reaction to a bacterial infection. It causes inflammation in the brain that causes the child’s symptoms.
Toni Shepherd saw his daughter Beth, then 13 years old, completely changing his personality in a few weeks. “”She was really a good student, among the best in school. She was mature. It was independent. She already had a job. She managed very well – and then things went wrong …“explains his mother at Mirror.
Indeed, the teenager suddenly started to have rage access. Other times, she was petrified, unable to recognize her relatives and convinced that she was going to be kidnapped or murdered. “It is as if someone had pressed a switch and you no longer recognize the person in front of you”recalls Toni Shepherd. After months of medical wandering, the family now has a diagnosis. The girl suffers from a sides (Pediatric Acute-onSet Neuropsychiatric syndrome), a rare neuropsychiatric affection which affects children and young adolescents.
Pans, pandas: around twenty physical or neurological symptoms
The sides as well as the Pandas (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated With Streptococcus) are two pathologies recognized recently by health professionals. Due to certain similarities in symptoms, the two conditions were until recently assimilated to OCD. Their clinical picture is indeed close:
- The appearance of obsessions and compulsions: “On the other hand, in the case of an obsessive compulsive (OCD) disorder (OCD), obsessions and compulsions develop more gradually and can take months, even years, before becoming obvious to the person who suffers and their loved ones”, specifies the Anxiety Canada on its site;
- Tics: that is to say, particular motor or vocal movements. This was also one of the first symptoms of Beth;
- extreme irritability and sensitivity;
- A regression of development capacities: in some cases, children have difficulty writing or night enresis.
Other signs are added with the sides and pandas:
- eating disorders such as a sudden restriction of food;
- sensory problems such as hypersensitivity to clothing, sounds and light;
- Intense and/or angry irritability (for example, cries);
- attention and memory disorders;
- Sudden separation anxiety: the child refuses for example to sleep alone;
- An intense and/or panic generalized concern (“terrorized look”);
- new fears or phobias;
- a deterioration of motor capacities;
- a modified urinary frequency or enuresis;
- agitated or unusual movements of the body.
Many symptoms that young Beth presented as her mother explains to the British press. His daughter refused to eat certain foods because they “came from a farm and the farms were dirty”she regularly hit her head against the wall, paralysis occurred because her body “forgot” how to work. The teenage state of health has worsened, until nearly 80 crises per day.
It was during this period that Toni heard the word Pans for the first time: “It was my mother who discovered the sides and she sounded one day and said: I have it. I was a little skeptical because so many symptoms overlap with different things, but it was just perfect.” Beth presented 19 symptoms on the twenty listed.
Neuropsychiatric diseases linked to poor immune reaction to a bacteria
According to experts, pandas and sides are neuropsychiatric diseases caused by an immune response to a poorly directed trigger. This causes inflammation in the brain and causes physical and psychiatric symptoms. We are talking about pandas when the poor immune response comes in the face of a streptococcal bacteria, and sections when the autoimmune and inflammation response is linked to a bacterial infection other than streptococcus. “These infections include Lyme disease, mononucleosis, H1N1 flu and mycoplasmes”ajoute Anxiety Canada.
The two neurological pathologies generally affect children between 3 and 14 years old. “At the beginning of adolescence, most children developed immunity against streptococci, so the pandas is much less likely to appear for the first time.”
Antibiotics are the first line of treatment in the face of these disorders.
If many children treated for the pandas/sides are completely recovered, some “Having more persistent symptoms can have a” push “again with new infections”explains the Canadian site. “In some cases, symptoms can actually worsen with each infection and, therefore, as a preventive basis, doctors and parents can decide to weigh the costs and advantages of the pursuit of antibiotic treatment for a very long period, even until puberty.”
Beth, now 16 years old, is still very impacted by the disease. “She probably spends two to four days a week in a wheelchair. One or two with her crutches. She usually has one day a week when she is mobile, but she must have rested until that and must rest three days after”explains the mother. The family has launched a kitty to finance hyperbaric oxygen therapy which should allow them to have more energy and sleep better.
