Spouses tend to share psychiatric disorders, massive study finds
nature.com
nature.com
> People with a psychiatric disorder are more likely to marry someone who has the same condition than to partner with someone who doesn’t, according to a massive study
Or...
Alzheimer's isn't in the set they're looking at here, but a curious data point is that neurosurgeons die of Alzheimer's at ~2.5x the rate of the general public.
There's definitely a live hypothesis that it's caused by some type of transmissible infection.
> Increased mortality risk for male neurosurgeons was seen from leukemia, nervous system disease (particularly Alzheimer disease), and aircraft accidents
Feels like cherry-picking
I think you're incorrectly attributing to viral/bacterial infection what can more likely be explained by a difference in lifestyles. Nearly 80% of people who die from Leukemia are over the age of 65. People who die in airplane accidents are usually flying private and that is not a lifestyle all of us can afford.
I think it's more likely that doctors die of specific causes because they have more money than the average person, the knowledge to do their best to avoid heart disease and smoking (and other hazardous activities except apparently for flying private), or perhaps because they're exposed to chemicals through their work environment
It’s certainly not conclusive, but this is not nearly as crazy a hypothesis as people (for some reason) reflexively assume it to be.
"For most disorders, the chances of partners sharing a diagnosis increased slightly with each decade, particularly for those with disorders related to substance use."
"Although the study did not investigate what causes the phenomenon, Fan says three theories could help to explain it. First, people might be attracted to those who resemble them. 'Perhaps they better understand each other due to shared suffering, so they attract each other,' he says.
Second, a shared environment could make partners more alike — a process known as convergence. And third, the societal stigma of having a psychiatric disorder narrows a person’s choice of spouse."