{"id":481,"date":"2009-08-14T08:05:18","date_gmt":"2009-08-14T13:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=481"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:30:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:30:24","slug":"who-gets-toxoplasmosis-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/who-gets-toxoplasmosis-in-the-united-states\/2009\/08\/14\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Gets Toxoplasmosis in the United States?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/08\/3-kittens1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-484\" title=\"Three kittens on a white background\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/08\/3-kittens-150x1501.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>This might seem bizarre, but one of the reasons I chose to go into Infectious Diseases as a field was the names of the diseases (and often the micro-organisms that caused them) sounded so darn cool.<\/p>\n<p>For example, if you were a science fiction writer you could hardly come up with a better-sounding name for a mysterious disease than &#8220;toxoplasmosis.&#8221;\u00a0 Or its full name, <em>&#8220;Toxoplasma gondii&#8221;<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Major Pribulon, I&#8217;d advise against taking your Colonial Defense Armada into Sector 18, Ambrilla Zone &#8212; I hear reports of a widespread outbreak of <strong>TOXOPLASMOSIS<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wow, that sounds scary.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, from the only toxoplasma diagnostic reference lab in the United States &#8212; the one at Stanford, founded by Jack Remington, now headed by Jose Montoya &#8212; comes this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.journals.uchicago.edu\/doi\/abs\/10.1086\/605433\" target=\"_blank\">fascinating paper<\/a> on risk factors for acquiring toxoplasmosis in this country.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a case-control study using 148 newly-acquired cases from their serology lab, comparing them with 413 negative controls.\u00a0 Here are the significant risks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>eating raw ground beef or rare lamb<\/li>\n<li>eating locally cured, dried, or smoked meat<\/li>\n<li>working with meat<\/li>\n<li>drinking unpasteurized goat&#8217;s milk<\/li>\n<li>having 3 or more (!) kittens<\/li>\n<li>eating raw oysters, clams, or mussels<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Interesting that having 1 or 2 kittens was <em>not<\/em> a risk factor, and neither was gardening.\u00a0 Raw shellfish consumption is one I hadn&#8217;t heard before; there are several plausible explanations:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Oysters, clams, and mussels are filter feeders that concentrate <em>T. gondii<\/em>, as has been shown under experimental conditions. Sea otters in California have been found to be infected with <em>T. gondii<\/em>, and it is likely that they are often infected by eating mollusks, which filter <em>T. gondii<\/em> from seawater. The seawater in California is thought to be contaminated by <em>T. gondii<\/em> oocysts that originate from cat feces, survive or bypass sewage treatment, and travel to the coast through river systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And don&#8217;t forget:\u00a0 stay out of the Ambrilla Zone, Sector 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This might seem bizarre, but one of the reasons I chose to go into Infectious Diseases as a field was the names of the diseases (and often the micro-organisms that caused them) sounded so darn cool. For example, if you were a science fiction writer you could hardly come up with a better-sounding name for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,8],"tags":[133,134,150,275,280,301,341,359,533,538,615,634,673,729,738,793,816,835,838,850,892,935,936,996],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-california","tag-california-mussel","tag-case-control-study","tag-diagnostic-reference","tag-dna-sequencing","tag-eating-raw-oysters","tag-experimental-conditions","tag-filter-feeders","tag-jack-remington","tag-jose-montoya","tag-micro-organisms","tag-mysterious-disease","tag-oocysts","tag-plausible-explanations","tag-polymerase-chain-reaction","tag-reference-lab","tag-risk-factor","tag-science-fiction-writer","tag-sea-otters","tag-sewage-treatment","tag-t-gondii","tag-toxoplasma","tag-toxoplasmosis","tag-working-with-meat"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}