Measuring cytokines like TNF-alpha and interleukin-6 in cerebrospinal fluid would be valuable for diagnosing psychiatric illness.

“I think that psychiatrists should be doing you know spinal taps I think we should be doing CSF assay and the problem is that that's not easy and it you know when you puncture the dura and you puncture the into the cerebral spinal space people can get bleeding and they can get so they can get bad side effects so it's hard to know but if there were a way if unfortunately the body is not designed in a convenient way to sample the cerebrospinal fluid but if there were a way we would be doing that”