Abstract
Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular zoonotic parasite, infecting warm-blood animals including humans. Previous serological surveys of T. gondii infection have focused on people of different occupations and special groups, such as slaughterhouse workers, AIDS patients and pregnant women. To investigate the potential impact of T. gondii infection on the health of young students, the prevalence of T. gondii infection and associated risk factors among the newly enrolled undergraduates and postgraduate students were investigated. A total of 3,569 newly enrolled students (age range: 15- to 37-years-old, median 26 years) from various regions of China were recruited in this study. The serum samples were tested for the presence of T. gondii specific IgG by the modified agglutination test (MAT). Questionnaires were used to collect information on risk factors for T. gondii infection. Sixty-five (1.82%) out of 3,569 participants were seropositive for IgG antibodies to T. gondii by MAT (titer≥1:20). Four variables were found to be positively associated with T. gondii infection, including primary geographical location, living in rural areas, gardening or agriculture, and drinking unboiled water by the univariate logistic regression, and only gardening or agriculture was the independent risk factor for T. gondii positivity by using multivariate logistic regression in this study, which may provide information to guide future research and control policies.
Highlights
Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular zoonotic parasite, infecting warm-blood animals, including humans
The overall prevalence of T. gondii antibodies among these participants was 1.82% (65/3,569); the infection rates of the students coming from eastern, southern, central, north, northwest, southwestern and northeastern regions of China are 1.49, 5.55, 2.15, 1.37, 1.97, 6.58, and 1.34%, respectively
These results indicated that T. gondii infection occurred earlier in students in all geographical regions in China, but at lower infection rate than that of total population reported earlier (Xiao et al, 2010; Chiang et al, 2012; Yang et al, 2013)
Summary
Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular zoonotic parasite, infecting warm-blood animals, including humans. Humans can be infected through three major ways including consumption of undercooked meat containing T. gondii tissue cysts, ingesting oocystscontaminated water, soil, vegetables and fruits, and transmission from mother to fetus during pregnancy (Dubey, 2010; Wang et al, 2016). Primary infection during pregnancy can cause severe damage to fetus and newborns including stillbirth, abortion and blindness. It can cause severe infections in individuals with compromised immune systems such as patients with AIDS, cancer treatment or organ transplantation (Dubey, 2010; Zhou et al, 2011). Immune competent individuals infected with T. gondii are generally asymptomatic; T. gondii infection has been associated with neuropsychiatric disorders suggesting that latent infection may have subtle neurological effects (John et al, 2015)
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