Case Reports

Understanding Psychosis in a Veteran With a History of Combat and Multiple Sclerosis

A patient with significant combat history and previous diagnoses of multiple sclerosis and unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorder was admitted with acute psychosis inconsistent with expected clinical presentations.

Fed Pract. 2019 June;36(suppl 4):S32-S35

Author(s):

References

1. Wallin MT, Culpepper WJ, Campbell JD, et al. The prevalence of MS in the United States: A population-based estimate using health claims data. Neurology. 2019;92(10):e1029-e1040.

2. Camara-Lemarroy CR, Ibarra-Yruegas BE, Rodriguez-Gutierrez R, Berrios-Morales I, Ionete C, Riskind P. The varieties of psychosis in multiple sclerosis: a systematic review of cases. Mult Scler Relat Disord. 2017;12:9-14.

3. Cottrel SS, Wilson SA. The affective symptomatology of disseminated sclerosis: a study of 100 cases. J Neurol Psychopathology. 1926;7(25):1-30.

4. Johansson V, Lundholm C, Hillert J, et al. Multiple sclerosis and psychiatric disorders: comorbidity and sibling risk in a nationwide Swedish cohort. Mult Scler. 2014;20(14):1881-1891.

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6. Gilberthorpe TG, O’Connell KE, Carolan A, et al. The spectrum of psychosis in multiple sclerosis: a clinical case series. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment. 2017;13:303.

7. Patten SB, Svenson LW, Metz LM. Psychotic disorders in MS: population-based evidence of an association. Neurology 2005;65(7):1123-1125.

8. Kosmidis MH, Giannakou M, Messinis L, Papathanasopoulos P. Psychotic features associated with multiple sclerosis. Int Rev Psychiatry. 2010; 22(1):55-66.

9. US Department of Veterans Affairs. Public health: military exposures. https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/. Updated April 16, 2019. Accessed May 13, 2019.

10. DeBeer BB, Davidson D, Meyer EC, Kimbrel NA, Gulliver SB, Morissette SB. The association between toxic exposures and chronic multisymptom illness in veterans of the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. J Occup Environ Med. 2017;59(1):54-60.

11. Kang HK, Li B, Mahan CM, Eisen SA, Engel CC. Health of US veterans of 1991 Gulf War: a follow-up survey in 10 years. J Occup Environ Med. 2009;51(4):401-410.

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16. Fragoso YD, Frota ER, Lopes JS, et al. Severe depression, suicide attempts, and ideation during the use of interferon beta by patients with multiple sclerosis. Clin Neuropharmacol. 2010;33(6):312-316.

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18. Abou-Donia MB, Lieberman A, Curtis L. Neural autoantibodies in patients with neurological symptoms and histories of chemical/mold exposures. Toxicol Ind Health. 2018;34(1):44-53.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated neurodegenerative disease that affects > 700,000 people in the US.¹ The hallmarks of MS pathology are axonal or neuronal loss, demyelination, and astrocytic gliosis. Of these, axonal or neuronal loss is the main underlying mechanism of permanent clinical disability.

MS also has been associated with an increased prevalence of psychiatric illnesses, with mood disorders affecting up to 40% to 60% of the population, and psychosis being reported in 2% to 4% of patients.²The link between MS and mood disorders, including bipolar disorder and depression, was documented as early as 1926,with mood disorders hypothesized to be manifestations of central nervous system (CNS) inflammation.³ More recently, inflammation-driven microglia have been hypothesized to impair hippocampal connectivity and activate glucocorticoid-insensitive inflammatory cells that then overstimulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.^4,5

Although the prevalence of psychosis in patients with MS is significantly rarer, averaging between 2% and 4%.⁶ A Canadian study by Patten and colleagues reviewed data from 2.45 million residents of Alberta and found that those who identified as having MS had a 2% to 3% prevalence of psychosis compared with 0.5% to 1% in the general population.⁷ The connection between psychosis and MS, similar to that between mood disorders and MS, has been described as a common regional demyelination process. Supporting this, MS manifesting as psychosis has been found to present with distinct magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings, such as diffuse periventricular lesions.⁸ Still, no conclusive criteria have been developed to distinguish MS presenting as psychosis from a primary psychiatric illness, such as schizophrenia.

In patients with combat history, it is possible that both neurodegenerative and psychotic symptoms can be explained by autoantibody formation in response to toxin exposure. When soldiers were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, they may have been exposed to multiple toxicities, including depleted uranium, dust and fumes, and numerous infectious diseases.⁹ Gulf War illness (GWI) or chronic multisymptom illness (CMI) encompass a cluster of symptoms, such as chronic pain, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, dermatitis, and seizures, as well as mental health issues such as depression and anxiety experienced following exposure to these combat environments.^10,11

In light of this diagnostic uncertainty, the authors detail a case of a patient with significant combat history previously diagnosed with MS and unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorder (USS & OPD) presenting with acute psychosis.

Case Presentation

A 35-year-old male veteran, with a history of MS, USS & OPD, posttraumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) was admitted to the psychiatric unit after being found by the police lying in the middle of a busy intersection, internally preoccupied. On admission, he reported a week of auditory hallucinations from birds with whom he had been communicating telepathically, and a recurrent visual hallucination of a tall man in white and purple robes. He had discontinued his antipsychotic medication, aripiprazole 10 mg, a few weeks prior for unknown reasons. He was brought to the hospital by ambulance, where he presented with disorganized thinking, tangential thought process, and active auditory and visual hallucinations. The differential diagnoses included USS & OPD, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and ruled out substance-induced psychotic disorder, and psychosis as a manifestation of MS.