4 ms·
This parasite is indeed real and widespread, and the reason you don't notice its effects in others is because its effects are rather minor, resulting from small
by erlanger 17y ago
This parasite is indeed real and widespread, and the reason you don't notice its effects in others is because its effects are rather minor, resulting from small brain infections and increased dopamine at certain sites (I had no luck pinpointing the location of these, unfortunately).
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 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.
- biohacker42 17y agoThis is old news and fluff. For a less fluffy article: 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 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.
- erlanger 17y agoIn case I missed it, did that study control for location? I know that the other study stated that it did not have much (if any) background information on the candidates, but did say that infection rates for the parasite are higher in villages and small towns. I think that this is a significant lurking variable in any traffic accident analysis, and needs to be considered: In my experience, rural folk are less exposed to some of the more "creative" driving situations than those who live closer in.
- biohacker42 17y agoGood catch! I don't think they controlled for location.
- 10ren 17y agoSo, the cat killed curiosity?
- igorhvr 17y agoHow do I know whether I am infected or not?
- eru 17y agoFrom the article: > 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."
- nalbyuites 17y agoThanks for clearing this up. Because I have been wanting to keep a cat since forever. Taught me not to jump to conclusions without research.