Prevalence of Antibodies Against Toxoplasma gondii in Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) From Svalbard and East Greenland.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
Detection of high levels of congenital transmission of Toxoplasma gondii in natural urban populations of Mus domesticus.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
Serosurvey for Toxoplasma gondii in arctic foxes and possible sources of infection in the high Arctic of Svalbard.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
One of the parasites, Toxoplasma gondii, can infect people, though it's most often found in cat feces.
Fuller Torrey (and others) suggests the protozoa Toxoplasma gondii is a likely suspect for the pathogen that causes schizophrenia.
Toxoplasma can also infect the human brain, making men distrustful of others and less likely to heed moral rules.
Polyparasitism Is Associated with Increased Disease Severity in Toxoplasma gondii-Infected Marine Sentinel Species.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii antibodies in clinically ill cats in the United States.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
Transmission of Toxoplasma: Clues from the study of sea otters as sentinels of Toxoplasma gondii flow into the marine environment.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
The culprit parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, can get into the food chain via cats faeces causing contamination of soil, water and plants.
The occurrence of Toxoplasma gondii and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato in Ixodes ricinus ticks from eastern Poland with the use of PCR.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
Humans may catch the infection from eating undercooked meat from animals harbouring toxoplasma or from contact with cat litter or contaminated soil.
Or take Toxoplasma, a protozoan that needs to move between cats and their prey and back again in order to complete its life cycle.
Type X Toxoplasma gondii in a wild mussel and terrestrial carnivores from coastal California: New linkages between terrestrial mammals, runoff and toxoplasmosis of sea otters.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
Toxoplasma gondii infection in humans and animals in the United States.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
All of these suggested effects are obviously bad for the individuals involved, but some researchers go further and propose that entire societies are being altered by Toxoplasma.
Evidence for high levels of vertical transmission in Toxoplasma gondii.
FORBES: House Cats Said to Lead to Car Crashes, Suicides, and Mental Disorders
Dr Flegr has studied several aspects of the Toxoplasma question.
Toxoplasma gondii reproduces only inside the bodies of cats.
That does not, of course, prove Toxoplasma causes schizophrenia.
In collaboration with Bob Yolken of Johns Hopkins University, Dr Fuller discovered that people who suffer from schizophrenia are almost three times more likely than the general population to have antibodies to Toxoplasma.
Humans are dead-end hosts as far as Toxoplasma is concerned, so the exact effect will not have been honed by natural selection and may therefore be different from the one in animals that are actually useful to the parasite.
In 2006 Kevin Lafferty of the University of California, Santa Barbara, published a paper noting a correlation between levels of neuroticism established by national surveys in various countries and the level of Toxoplasma infection recorded in pregnant women (a group who are tested routinely).
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