Medical Centric

Toxoplasmosis: What You Need to Know

Men's Health, Women's Health / By

Toxoplasmosis

  • Toxoplasmosis is an infection that is caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. 
  • The parasite is found in undercooked meat, especially venison, pork, and lamb, and can also be found in cat feces.
  • It can also reach the human body through contaminated water.
  • Toxoplasmosis carries serious implications, often proving fatal.
  • It can also cause serious birth defects in fetuses if a mother is affected.
  • The parasite is quite common, believed to infect around 60 million people in the US alone.
  • However, most people with it do not get symptoms and can live their entire lives without knowing.
    Let’s look at the disease in detail:

Causes

  • T. gondii is present inside contaminated meat and water.
  • It is most commonly contracted from meat that’s raw or undercooked or by drinking contaminated water.
  • In rare cases, the parasite can also move into the human body through blood transfusions or organ transplantation.
  • T. gondii can also exist in feces and may be present in the manure you use to treat your produce.
  • Along with that, T. gondii is present in all warm-blooded animals, but cats are the only known hosts of this parasite.
  • The parasite sexually reproduces inside cats and its eggs move out through a cat’s feces.
  • Cats do not exhibit any symptoms even though they have the parasite in them.
  • This is why it is unadvised for pregnant women to clean out cat litters.
  • It is fetuses and people with compromised immune systems who are at the greatest risk of getting toxoplasmosis.

Symptoms

Toxoplasmosis usually does not cause any symptoms to show up and people can spend their entire lives without knowing they have the parasite in their bodies.  In symptomatic cases, people are likely to experience:

  1. Headaches
  2. A fever
  3. Sore throat
  4. Swollen lymph nodes, usually in the neck
  5. Muscle pain and aches

    The symptoms last around a month and then disappear on their own. The condition can be quite dangerous for people with compromised or weakened immune systems.  They are likely to experience:

  1. A lung infection that causes fever, coughing, and shortness of breath.
  2. Brain inflammation, which causes seizures, confusion, and headaches, possibly leading to a coma.
  3. An eye infection that causes eye pain and blurry vision.
    Toxoplasmosis can be life-threatening for unborn babies if they get it from their mother and can cause deformities.

Diagnosis

  • Your doctor will take a blood sample and check for the presence of antibodies against a T. gondii infection. If the antibodies indicate an infection, they will likely order further tests to find out how long you have been infected.
  • For pregnant women, they might take some amniotic fluid to check for the presence of the parasite in the unborn baby.

Treatment

  • Toxoplasmosis symptoms often disappear on their own, but in severe cases, a doctor is likely to prescribe antibiotic sulfadiazine, and Daraprim (pyrimethamine).
  • These medicines are a last resort in case of an unborn baby having toxoplasmosis as they can have side effects.