Untangling PANDAS & PANS: Conversations about Infection-Associated, Immune-Mediated Neuropsychiatric Disorders

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Hello and welcome to Untangling PANDAS & PANS, a podcast about two relatively unknown medical disorders characterized by the sudden and dramatic onset of obsessions and compulsions, vocal or motor tics, or restricted eating behavior -- and a whole host of other symptoms -- following strep or other bacterial or viral infection. Sometimes overnight. I have the privilege of interviewing some of the top researchers and clinicians in the rapidly growing field of Infection-Associated, Immune-Mediated Neuropsychiatric Disorders. That’s a mouthful of words that encompasses the strangely named disorders, PANDAS and PANS. My name is Dr. Susan Manfull. I am a social psychologist, the Executive Director of The Alex Manfull Fund, and the mother of Alex Manfull, who died at 26 years old due to PANDAS, a neuropsychiatric disorder my husband and I knew next to nothing about, certainly not that our daughter could die from it. PANDAS is an acronym for “Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychi