Toxoplasma

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.theatlant...u-crazy/308873/

 

 

NO ONE WOULD accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 53-year-old Czech scientist has the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought, and his still-youthful, square-jawed face is framed by frizzy red hair that encircles his head like a ring of fire.

 

Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.

 

The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis—the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death.T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDSepidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.

 

But if Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”

 

 

 

latest NG http://ngm.nationalg...kers-gallery#/5

>Other links

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/3/757.fullhttp://www.stanleyresearch.org/dnn/Default.aspx?tabid=182

Edited January 17, 2013 by Michaelangelica

[CraigD]

We had some discussion of T. gondii and its amazing effects on the human brain and behavior in this Feb 2012 thread.

 

What I find most amazing about T. gondii is that it may account, in small or large part, for the popularity of housecats as pets, and thus, the co-evolution of our two species.

 

On the upside, research suggest that T. Gondii infections increase human intelligence. On the downside, it also suggest it causes schizophrenia. See the wikipedia article for T. gondii for more and references.