What is it about?
Protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii infects about 30 % of Americans and 40-50 % of inhabitants of Germany and France. Life-long presence of the parasite in tissues of a majority of infected individuals is usually considered asymptomatic. However, our present cross sectional cohort study performed on nonclinical population of 1486 volunteers showed that that 333 infected subjects scored significantly worse than 1153 controls in 28 of 29 health-related variables and reported significantly higher rates of 77 disorders (of a list of 134).
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Why is it important?
Results of the present cohort study, along with already published data from many case-control studies or ecological regression studies suggest that latent toxoplasmosis represents a large and so far underrated public health problem.
Perspectives
My Prague lab revealed many behavioural effects of so-called latent toxoplasmosis during past 25 years. These changes are usually interpreted as the results of manipulative activity of the parasite aimed to increase the chance of its transmission from intermediate to definitive host by predation. To explain the opposite-direction of most of toxoplasmosis-associated behavioural shifts in men and women, we suggested the stress-coping hypothesis in 2016 Int. J. Parasitol. 36: 1485-1492. This hypothesis suggests that seemingly harmless latent toxoplasmosis impairs health of both men and women. (Men and women are known to react behaviourally to chronical stress in opposite ways.) In a process of testing this hypothesis we reviled a very disturbing fact, namely that latent toxoplasmosis with its 30% prevalence has numerous and strong effects on public health. Toxoplasma could be in fact the most dangerous protozoan killer in developed countries.
Jaroslav Flegr
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Impaired health status and increased incidence of diseases in Toxoplasma-seropositive subjects – an explorative cross-sectional study, Parasitology, October 2016, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0031182016001785.
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