Talk:Toxoplasmosis

I just saw this [1] that claims that those who are infected have their personality change.--Lzygenius 18:10, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there has been evidence pointing towards this for a while. It is what the "behavioral changes" at the bottom of symptoms is about. The risk-taking behaviour stimulated by the parasite seems to be the cause of the increase in traffic accidents. --Mike C | talk 22:11, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

if I understand the research correctly, the effects of it seem to decrease over time after infection. Atleast, I think that's what the accident research says, it wasn't particularly easy to understand the implications of the graph I saw.WolfKeeper

OTOH, the number of latent parasites presumably does go up over time, apparently; but the immune system does apparently mostly keep a lid on it.WolfKeeper

I wonder if this is sometimes traced to dogs. I love dogs, but dogs love "kitty crackers". My dog races out the door to gobble up as many as he can on the way to the car. A nasty thing to do just before "kissing" everyone. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 22:04, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Feces/ faeces

This article is using British English at the moment. Please leave faeces spelt so, not feces. --Mike C | talk 19:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

more possible references

• Genes, germs, and schizophrenia: an evolutionary perspective.
• Drugs used in the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder inhibit the replication of Toxoplasma gondii.

(not actually linked in because I'm being lazy and don't feel like hunting down the actual citations, not just pointers to such.)

Treatment

Besides the symptoms and cysts, is there a treatment to get rid of the parasite itself?

After the initial infection is past, the cysts (bradyzoites) *are* the parasite. The cysts slowly grow, and then occasionally burst and about a thousand of the parasite come out and go walkabouts (i.e. they turn into tachyzoites). The immune system mostly jumps on and kills the tachyzoites, but a few may find a new nerve/muscle cell to take up residence in, and they then burrow in and turn into bradyzoites and begin growing again. Provided the immune system is in good shape, there's no major symptoms due to this. But if somebody has AIDs when they come out then there's no resistance and the tachyzoites party on down and the person can die.

Because the cyst form is very hardy, there's no known treatment that is guaranteed to kill all the cysts, but it seems to do a good enough job in most cases.

LSD?

The Straight Dope says T. Gondii might produce LSD. I want to hear more about that. —Keenan Pepper 16:21, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Hodgkin's disease and Toxoplasmosis

The main article indicates that those people with an auto-immune disease are at a higher risk when catching Toxoplasmosis. Hodgkin's disease is frequently characterized by fewer white cells in the blood. Are those people also any more susceptible to Toxoplasmosis than the general population?

I'm not a doctor, so take the following with a healthy dose of skepticism. The risk is for people with immunocomprimisation, not auto-immune disease per se (Although treatment for some auto-immune diseases might depress the immune system). There is thought to be a link between the two diseases, but I can't seem to find any conclusive references for H's Lymphoma in particular. It seems that infection with T. gondii with lymphomas can cause mis-diagnoses, and that chemotherapy for the lymphoma would cause severe problems in cases of T. gondii that were not kept under sufficient control. Hope that's a help. --Mike C | talk 21:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Culture-shaping

I find this page worth mentioning in the article: http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/08/the_cultureshaping_parasite.php

Treatment

This paper gives good description of diagnosis and treatment of congenital toxoplasmosis. Worth linking. http://www.rrsss17.gouv.qc.ca/santepub/pdf/Nunavik_Toxoplasmose_1999A.pdf The paper is in French but the diagrams are also in English.

"The vast majority of patients with a normal immune system do not require any treatment." If the parasite is lowering the victim's intelligence, then this statement is totally incorrect. 1/3 of the world has this thing in them? Why is the article so unconcerned about treating a horrible epidemic?

My son has been diagnosed with ocular toxoplasmosis and has a large scar on his macula (from the dead parasite). My question is how do we know that he will not have a similar occurance again in the future? Is he safe from future attacks? We are having a hard time finding info about future possibilities. 220.131.99.84 02:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)Concerned mom.

Behavioral effects on humans

The evidence for behavioral effects on humans, although intriguing, is relatively weak. There have been no randomized clinical trials studying the effects of toxoplasma on human behavior.

a quick glance at pubmed is telling me the spurious claim quoted above, from the wiki article, is complete rubbish... but i'd like someone to doublecheck and verify before i (or somebody) remove it. thanks. --Wedge 14:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Responsible for Sea Otter population loss. http://www.viamagazine.com/top_stories/articles/seaotter_savior07.asp

I have occular toxoplasmosis and have had 3 episodes of the dormant cysts breaking open and causing damage to my retina. The first episode must have happened near adolescence and the first eye doctor to notice the scarring in my retina was unsure why I had it. Eventually an eye doctor could tell me what had caused the scarring some years later. The next time I had an episode was after the birth of my first child, I noticed the blind spot in my eye was suddenly bigger. I went to a retinal specialist, The medication to kill the parasite was not something safe to take while nursing/pregnant. The 3rd episode was a few years later and I was able to take the medication (it was a folic acid inhibitor) that time and have not had any further episodes in the last 9 years. The damage to vision from this parasite can be pretty serious, at this point my left eye has no central vision and could be considered "legally blind" but does have peripheral vision left. The damage from my first episode was very small, it left a blind spot that took up about 4 small squares on a graph paper when looking at it. BarbaraTimmons 04:36, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Like Barbara above i too have had 3 episodes which have caused damage to my retina. The first when i was 19, then at 21 and again now at 36. The first time caused substantial damage to my retina as Drs where unable to identify what was causing my blurred vision and treatment was delayed. this led to me taking a year out of my university course, not only to fully recover but also to give my brain a chance to adjust to the change in visual messages. I had a problem with judging distances and reading would make me nauseus and dizzy. After a few months when my brain had adapted these symptoms went away. With the experience of the first episode i knew specifically to seek out opthamologists with specialism in retina problems for the subsequent episodes so treatment was immediate and little damage was done. I it is vital that if you suspect you have this problem that you identify a medical specialist who can recognize this problem - so you don't end up being passed from one to another medical professional and treatment is swift and appropriate. I am now on a cocktail of 9 medications and my Dr says he will discuss ongoing prevention medication once this episode is under control. I was very surprised at this latest episode as i had been told that the parasite would 'die off' and as i got older it would cease to reactivate. At the moment i am virtually blind in one eye and am hoping this reverts as treament kicks in. I can't emphaisize enough that teh speed and quality of treatment you recieve is key. Velhus 03:59, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Test For Toxoplasmosis

So how do doctors test for Toxo? Is there a standard test or do they just use a general fecal matter test?24.83.178.11 04:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)KnowledgeSeeker

Generally it's a blood test with an antibody titer run against Toxoplasma. -- MarcoTolo 04:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Does this test also work for the latent phase?24.83.178.11 06:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)BeeCier

Not unless you test soon after (within a few weeks/months). There's also a challenge test where they innoculate you with dead toxoplasmosis, and if you react you've previously been infected. I don't know how long that works for after the initial infection though, probably a lot longer.WolfKeeper 01:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Wolfkeeper. If I go and ask to get tested and turns out I have it, can I request a atovaquone/clindamycin treatment for latent toxoplasmosis even though I'm not immunocompromised, which is what the article implies is when treatment is considered? I'm concerned about the potential behavioral effects. Any downside from such a treatment? And is there any sort of immunity developed to decrease the potential of subsequent infection? At least one of the effects, reaction time, mentioned in the article, is mentioned to lessen over time, so perhaps I may be shooting myself in the foot if I get treated just so I have a subsequent reinfection and renewal of said effects. ThVa (talk) 12:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

You could possibly get prescribed it, but the medicine costs maybe $2000 or more (I haven't priced it recently). It's a long course at high dose of a fairly expensive medicine.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 13:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I have a blood test(titer) every few years or less.reason being that I had my first case when I was 15 back in 1977. I took all the medications prescribed as in the links(sulfadiazine, etc). I had a reactivation when I was in my last month of pregnancy in 1987. Probably because I could not tolerate the length of time I had to take the drugs the first time. I became lukemic, anemic, had swollen gland and was very ill. I had a severe case and therefore I check frequently for another reactivaton. I was very lucky that I still have my eyesight. I have a lesionin my eye now , it is a hairline below my central vision. Checking with a blood titer is a good thing if you have had a case of toxo. I believe that I contracted the protozoa from rabbit hutches we had in the back yard. Rabits are known to carry it.It also could of been the raw hamburger meat we ate infrequently as a kid. Who knows!?

Famous/Notable people with toxoplasmosis

Is this section encyclopedic? It does have a source.--ZayZayEM 07:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it does have a source, but the source (a lecture outline from a parasitology lab course) does not meet WP:RS standards, especially when considered in conjunction with WP:BLP. I'm trimming the list of those individuals covered under BLP pending better sources - if no reliable sources appear in a reasonable amount of time, the entire section should be deleted. -- MarcoTolo 03:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I am pretty angry, you arbitrarily deleted reliably sourced information from the wikipedia without doing any checking. The source was a published source on the web, and was specifically about the parasite in question, and was from an academic environment. People like Navratilova and Leslie Ash are very widely known to have contracted this disease, and even the most trivial checks would have found this. I consider this vandalism. You even deleted information about two other people who aren't even alive!!!! Which bit of Biography of LIVING PEOPLE didn't you understand????WolfKeeper 04:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

oocysts require longer than a single day to become "infective"

Can someone please clarify this statement (emphasis is mine):

but the risk may be reduced further by having the litterbox emptied daily (oocysts require longer than a single day to become infective), and by having someone else empty the litterbox.

Shouldn't that say "oocysts require longer than a single day to become effective" or "oocysts require more than a single day to become effective"? I'm not sure what this statement means, or even what an oocyst is. Gh5046 04:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Oocysts are sort of eggs shed in cat poo. The oocysts need to sit in cat poo for a day or two; they need to ripen up before they become infectious. If you were to eat the cat poo (yuck!) before that you wouldn't get infected, the stomach would break the oocysts open early and they would all die and you wouldn't get ill.WolfKeeper 05:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! I've changed that line in the article to say "effective." This sentence could probably be structured more clearly, but I don't want to change it for fear of changing its accuracy. Thanks again, WolfKeeper! Gh5046 05:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Infective is precisely correct. Effective isn't quite right. Effective implies connotations of positiveness (which is wrong here), whereas infective implies connotations of disease. Revert.WolfKeeper 06:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I was misreading the word. I was reading it as "ineffective." Sorry about that. Gh5046 06:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Junk science

Toxoplasmosis does not cause women to be more loving and attractive; it does not cause men to be more jealous and non-conformist; it does not cause schizophrenia; it does cause a horrible death from encephalitis in AIDS patients. Please show some respect to the dead, and the suffering, by not posting pseudo-scientific bullshit about this disease on this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.157.113.143 (talk) 02:27, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

"Lower rule-consciousness and jealousy (in men)"

does this mean "Lower rule-consciousness and lower jealousy" or "Lower rule-consciousness and (increased) jealousy"? --86.137.156.17 (talk) 13:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)