The parasite Toxoplasmosis gondii is a single-celled organism that infects and controls the minds of a wide variety of mammals, yet can only sexually reproduce within a cat. Although scientists are not exactly sure how Toxo performs mind control, they do know that it releases an enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase that creates dopamine and targets the reward and motivation portions of the brain as well as those linked with sexual arousal.
Rodents infected with Toxo become attracted to the scent of cat urine, which arouses them and allows for them to act more confident around felines, usually resulting in them being consumed. This is exactly what Toxo wants, to enter a host that they are able to reproduce in. Obviously we as humans are not attracted to cat pee, so your cat may not be trying to kill you after all, but that doesn't stop Toxo from being found in 1 out of 3 humans. You can get Toxo from undercooked meats, garden soil, cats, litter boxes, etc. New studies are suggesting that there are some benefits to being infected with Toxo such as improvement in action control. Alternatively the parasite can also kill you. Toxo often lays dormant for years yet if your immune system becomes compromised and weak, Toxo can then break out and attack your organs such as your retinas and brain.
Although the mind control creepy factor that fills our darkest fiction may still be up to debate it does appear to effect both men and women, although differently. Men infected with Toxo become more introverted and less attractive to women, while women on the other hand become more outgoing and sexually adventurous. Both infected men and women are likely to develop schizophrenia and are 2.5 times more likely to get into car accidents, very random I know. It is clear that Toxo influences the host, yet scientists are still learning the relationships between the length of infection and the manifestation of symptoms.
Whether Toxo is actually performing mind control is something that we as humans find hard to grasp, it must be science fiction, right? For now they do know that Toxo interferes with the hosts brain chemistry as a means to reproduce, spread, and overall improve its odds of living on.
It seems like Toxo have a wide variety of effects on human and cat. It seems like Toxo act very similar to a virus since it needs a host to thrive and maybe reproduce. Since Toxo is implicated in schizophrenia and car accident, would further study on how to inhibit Toxo reproduction be a treatment option for patients with hormone imbalance?
ReplyDeleteSince Toxo can't reproduce in a human anyways I don't know if inhibiting Toxo reproduction would effect patients at all. However killing off the parasite may be something to look into further, especially because some of the side effects are retinal degeneration and brain damage that can lead to death. I was looking at a study done on the screening of infants. Symptoms often do not show up at birth so in order to develop the treatment they had to screen a large amount of infants. They tested 635,000 and found that 100 were positive with congenital infection being confirmed in 52. 40% had abnormalities in the CNS and 10% had eye lesions. They started them on antitoxoplasma chemotherapy for a year and found that the treatment was "acceptable" as some children had a repeat of the infection. There is some debate in the literature about if the treatment is effective as well as what length of treatment is ideal. There was also some debate that the screening was costly and not warranted, however other countries like France have an aggressive screening process. Overall I think that more research needs to be done and screening processes need to be advanced.
DeleteHere is the link on the study:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199406303302604
Do we know what it is about the organism's reproductive system requires a cat as a host? Or, in other words, why does it have to be a cat? Could this be some sort of evolutionary relationship where the organism was present in rodents and now relies on cats just because cats have eaten infected rodents for enough years that the Toxo now rely on cats? The whole system seems weirdly specific to me.
ReplyDelete