Superbug invades the brain

21.09.01: A BIZARRE outbreak of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has swamped psychiatric hospitals in Birmingham. Sufferers repeatedly wash their hands or check they have turned off lights or locked doors.

'In the past six months we have had more than 500 new OCD patients,' says Professor Arthur Fairbone of the area health authority.

Experts believe that the cause of this epidemic is a super-strain of streptococcus, a bug that normally lives harmlessly in our throats. Having developed resistance to all known antibiotics, it has been able to invade the brain.

The bacterium attacks cells in the caudate nucleus of the basal ganglia, which controls instinctive survi