3 ms·
There's so much BS around toxoplasmosis online. Here's corrections for two common misconceptions: 1) Almost everyone who has it got it from eating undercooked
by cm2012 8y ago
There's so much BS around toxoplasmosis online. Here's corrections for two common misconceptions:
1) Almost everyone who has it got it from eating undercooked meat, not from cats. France has the highest rate of toxoplasmosis in the world because of their propensity for rare meats: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/.
2) Unless your cat lived a long part of it's life as an outdoor cat, it is very unlikely to have the parasite (like any parasite).
- in_cahoots 8y agoThis second point really surprised me. I’ve had 5 indoor cats over the course of more than 20 years and cleaned all of their litter boxes. All were adopted as stray kittens, so presumably they spent some time outdoors. And yet I tested negative for toxoplasmosis. As I understand it, you basically have to ingest the stool of a cat who recently hunted a rodent with the disease. If your cat stays indoors and you wash your hands after cleaning the litter box, that’s unlikely. In fact, you’re more likely to get it from gardening because cats will pee in the soil and you’re probably more likely to touch your face if you have touched soil than if you’ve just cleaned a litter box.