Infections might alter brain development while in the womb BERNARD BENOIT/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Children of mothers who had bacterial infections during pregnancy are more likely to develop mental health conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

We already knew that exposure to viruses in the womb increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia, but the effects of bacterial infections have been less clear.

Younga Lee at Brown University in Rhode Island and her colleagues studied 15,000 US adults whose mothers had regular health checks during pregnancy in the 1950s and 60s.

They found that those whose mothers had …