Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
abcnews.go.com
abcnews.go.com
http://workforce.cup.edu/Buckelew/dicrocoelium_dendriticum_i...
After about day 30, she passed a huge ball of worms in her stool. Let me emphasize "huge". Like, a babies fist. Needless to say, she had some parasites.
I now fear the juice fast... and, in a weird way... her :)
Although I do not doubt the infection rates I am sceptical about the conclusions. Any woman that does not LOVE cats is obviously not warm and attentive of others and I would like to see more details on the men samples; for example were they married to the above ladies or not. Do guilty and insecure people tend to have cats as pets?
Anyway I love cats since I was a kid and I am male! Worth the infection if I have it and perhaps the reason that so far I have not catch AIDS!
I like cats too, but I feel like I am missing something here. How did you get from "I love cats" to not getting AIDS?
The most agreed-upon effect appears to be that the parasite results in decreased neophilia. What a sensationalist story like this one will not tell you is that the observed effects are "rather low":
Our results showed that CMV infected subjects had lower scores in the personality dimension novelty seeking than the CMV-free subjects. Novelty seeking in infected subjects negatively correlated with levels of anti-CMV antibodies. Negative correlation was also found between novelty seeking and Toxoplasma-infection in Prague, while in villages and smaller cities the correlation was not significant. The effect of both infections, although highly significant, was rather low, explaining about 2 % of total variability of the novelty seeking in our experimental set.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/5/54
Further, while cats are this parasite's original host, it seems that you're as likely to become infected form undercooked meat as from water polluted with cat fecal matter. I guess that's not as much fun as saying "cats are bad, now everyone fight!" I love how every media outlet picked this up as soon ('06, granted) as possible but it took Reuters a month to report on conclusive findings that marijuana consumption results in lower incidence of head and neck cancer.
Increased incidence of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected military drivers and protective effect RhD molecule revealed by a large-scale prospective cohort study.
Look here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/9/72
Courtesy of the hard science sub-reddit.
For those with too little time to read the actual paper, here's the results summary:
We confirmed, using for the first time a prospective cohort study design, increased risk of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected subjects and demonstrated a strong protective effect of RhD positivity against the risk of traffic accidents posed by latent toxoplasmosis. Our results show that RhD-negative subjects with high titers of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies had a probability of a traffic accident of about 16.7%, i.e. a more than six times higher rate than Toxoplasma-free or RhD-positive subjects.
> So after I submitted the paper I put down my 30 bucks and got a blood test," he says. "It came out negative. I was so surprised."
Unfortunately, this is (1) old news; and (2) especially prone to obvious, knee-jerk LOLcats jokes -- there were already three before your comment. So I have mixed feelings about its topicality.
The danger of demonizing bad jokes is that eventually, nobody will make any jokes at all; they can't all be funny. Then we're just a bunch of annoyingly high-strung geeks being Very Serious about matters which have absolutely no relevance.
Toxoplasmosis' only agreed upon (and still alleged) effect is a decrease in neophilia, which is linked to monoamine oxidase A a product of the so called 'warrior gene' that is far more prevalent in society than toxoplasmosis infections (33% genetic prevalence amongst European whites IIRC and ~60% in Asian/Pacific Islanders).
Oh and BTW toxoplasmosis is easily curable, it's regularly cured in humans and in animals that carry it used for food production (Pigs, Sheep and farmed Deers). The reason doctors don't treat it, is because you're safer to have latent toxoplasmosis than none at all, not only can it lead to miscarriages in women, but the chance of encephalitis increases with decreased immune function. So if you get toxoplasmosis when you're healthy, like most people, you'll be fine, but if doctors go around curing it you'll get reinfected and seriously increase your risk for death.
Ironically the mild production of Monoamine Oxidase A is known for a decrease in danger-seeking behaviour, but extreme production (witnessed in people with the Warrior Gene) is known for an increase in danger-seeking behaviour. Toxoplasmosis apparently acts like the warrior gene for mice, but will in fact likely prolong the life of a human infected with latent toxoplasmosis.
(1) the effect on humans might be different for men vs. women (with one becoming more withdrawn, and the other more reckless); and
(2) that there's no treatment sure to reach latent cysts, and those that have the best chance have strong negative side effects.
In particular, I've never heard that having a latent infection is better than none-at-all, or that a latent infection protects against reinfection any more than having shaken the disease entirely (which with many diseases leaves residual resistance).
Do you have any references for this 'safer with latent toxoplasmosis' interpretation?
The biggest medical concern for infection is in women, no evidence has been shown that pregnancy will reactivate latent toxoplasmosis and allow it to become acute. If a woman is infected with toxoplasmosis it is safer to leave her untreated until she will no longer have children (around 50 years naturally, younger if her tubes are tied). Infection with toxoplasmosis when pregnant is exceptionally dangerous to the child (blindness and brain damage are exceptionally common, brain death can occur shortly after birth in many cases), but also very dangerous to the mother due to a suppressed immune system, which can start with flu-like symptoms and quickly progress to encephalitis.
Treatment in males could be performed at any time, however the course of drugs for latent toxoplasmosis are either exceptionally strong, or exceptionally long term and both are far more harmful than the infection. Not to mention that if the infection isn't completely removed it may become acute, potentially causing eye damage and nasal lesions, possibly a loss of smell. The bigger problem if the infection becomes acute is that the hosts immune system has usually been somewhat compromised by the medications.
There's also little proof of an immune resistance to toxoplasmosis and a person who has already been infected is highly likely to be reinfected, it is far more common to contract through your diet than your pet cat (prevalence in France is near 90%, but is near 5% in South Korea despite cat ownership averaging in the 20-40% around the world). This not only means you'll have to be retreated for the same exceptionally benign disease, but it increases your chances of acute infection.
I'm sure a magical cure all of toxoplasmosis would undoubtedly do good, but it's prevalent everywhere in the environment, and despite animals being treated with medications to prevent toxoplasmosis, food is the number one way to contract it. You would have to treat a few billion humans and animals, including vermin and hope none will become drug resistant.
Acute toxoplasmosis shows no signs of drug resistance, however latent toxoplasmosis already shows signs of drug resistant strains despite treatment barely being performed except in rare cases (Rh-negatives allegedly suffer decreased reaction time, which is dangerous for drivers, especially when already tired).
I have no references for non-treatment toxoplasmosis treatment being safer, that's just common sense when populations like France are near 90% infected and show lower violence rates than lower infected populations like Britain (22%) despite the infection allegedly increasing violence amongst males. The statistics would appear to be contradictory to some of the assumptions made by doctors.
What this really needs is an actual long-term behavioural study, but until then we have wild speculation with zero scientific basis and all appears to be contrary to current observable statistics.
Other than that, I'd say a quality medical dictionary or an excellent anatomy textbook like Gray's Anatomy wouldn't do you harm for the inquisitive mind. There are lots of texts out there, once you get acquainted with some it becomes easier to find others.
I personally believe you're better of understanding your body and medicine, because if you ever get sick you're stuck relying on another human being and not a living embodiment of scientific facts. You're never going to know something doesn't sound right, if you don't know what your doctor is talking about. I'd also add, always get a second opinion for even moderate care issues (if you can, I live in Canada and grew up in the UK with Universal Healthcare, I'm aware this isn't necessarily practical for everyone in the US who may read this), or at least find and discuss your medical concerns with others, it can sometimes help. I realised my psoriasis wasn't eczema (which I was originally diagnosed with) when I noticed the difference between mine and all the other kids, like I've said elsewhere it spread to 20% of my body because I was told it was benign. I knew a girl with 70% coverage because she'd been misdiagnosed; a single flare-up of her 'eczema' caused her to breakout over nearly her entire torso and needed hospitalization for about a month to get it under control.
Histoplasmosis IIRC is caused by a fungus spore. It's common in the ground everywhere, however in certain areas it's a lot more prevalent for some reason, I believe the states surrounding the Ohio and Mississippi rivers are the main place in North America. It's apparently on 80% of peoples skin in these areas, which is similar to ringworm (another fungus) in most people. However dirt infused with bird or bat droppings are a hotbed, so chicken litter of infected chickens is the common source for most humans. The only time fungi usually cause problems is when they get out of control, and dealing with infected guano is probably a good bet. IIRC it's usually an inhaled infection (causes something like pneumonia) but sometimes, often children, accidentally rub it into their eyes.
I had a severe outbreak of ringworm, my doctor told me it was highly contagious and I likely caught it from my dog. My dog was clean and when I visited a dermatologist he told me that because I have psoriasis the ringworm fungus basically struck it lucky and got through the skin. Incidentally the ringworm 'cured' my psoriasis (it used to cover about 20% of my torso and limbs, now I don't have a single patch).
Is anybody using ringworm as a psoriasis treatment?
The antifungal barely worked, but UV is known to be a treatment for both fungal infections and psoriasis. After my first round of antifungals I had a vacation scheduled for the south of France, the infections got better, but when I returned to the UK and by the time I'd got another appointment it'd flared up again. This occurred several times, after my third round I had basically a 2 month vacation in France and no medication. By 6 weeks the ringworm had cleared up and when I returned to the UK my doctor confirmed I was clear.
I visited my regular doctor again (not the one I'd dealt with the ringworm with as he was more specialist, plus on vacation) and she was amazed at my lack of psoriasis, except she confirmed (with a Auspitz's sign) that I still have psoriasis of the scalp.
I've always visited the south of France and Spain and a lot of other mediterranean destinations and none of them ever cleared up my psoriasis, it often went into remission but the scaling remained. So this makes me believe the ringworm (due to it removing a lot of the plaques) allowed the psoriasis to go into complete remission, which removed the food for the ringworm (it had only infected my existing psoriasis and not the rest of my body).
The ringworm left me with discoloration for about a year and I was fortunate enough not to get psoriasis nor ringworm on my nails (they can turn them into claw-like things). I wouldn't advocate it, but 25% of psoriasis patients get a fungal infection, so many might get lucky enough to have it happen to them too. It certainly didn't outright cure it, but I believe it acted as a catalyst of sorts that helped to remove it (I still have psoriasis, but it no longer covers 20% of my body, in fact it only occurs on my scalp, where the ringworm fortunately didn't spread to).
I have, however, read of tape worms being used for the treatment of a few other diseases, including Asthma and IBS (Crohn's specifically IIRC). Incidentally 50% of children with Asthma and eczema/psoriasis have the same defective gene (for filaggrin production), it's also believed Crohn's and hayfever (a condition I also have, but has severely diminished since my psoriasis has cleared from my skin) share the same gene. For asthma and crohn's there is already 'Helminthic therapy' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy), which typically uses pig whipworm, which is only transitory in humans (IE it only lives a short time). Not only does it have higher success rates than medicines, but it also has less severe side effects (hookworm I believe has higher success rates, but causes more people to have side effects and carries slightly worse side effects).
Perhaps in time helminthic therapy will spread to psoriasis treatment, as in theory it should work with any autoimmune disease. Hope this gave you some more info, personally I'd vote for helminthic therapy over ringworm for treating psoriasis, as the side effects of ringworm (whilst generally benign) can be very visual; the discoloration only stayed for about a year with me, but can apparently last considerably longer. I'm sure many women would prefer stomach cramps than potentially life-long discoloration of the skin (at the beginning it seriously looked jaundice in places).