Posted on 10/12/2006 12:32:29 PM PDT by FLOutdoorsman
Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite usually found in cats that can also infect humans, has been getting more than its fair share of the limelight lately. Fresh on the heels of speculation about T. gondii manipulating human behavior on a massive scale to advance its own survival, comes news that the parasite also appears to be exerting a very strong gender selection function in human pregnancies.
Infection by T. gondii is usually facilitated through the consumption of raw or undercooked meat, or, food or water contaminated with soil containing cat feces. Infection results in toxoplasmosis, which can lie dormant and go undetected in humans. Human infection by T. gondii is common. Worldwide, rates vary between 20 - 80 percent of the population, with under-developed nations being the worst affected.
The new gender-bending findings, published this week in the journal Naturwissenschaften, show that women harboring dormant toxoplasmosis are much more likely to give birth to boys than women who are toxoplasma negative.
The researchers, from the Czech Republic, analyzed the effect of dormant toxoplasmosis on the probability of a male birth using clinical records of babies born between 1996 and 2004 in private maternity clinics. The records included information on the mother's age, the concentration of toxoplasma antibodies in the mother's blood, previous deliveries and the sex of the newborn. They found that the presence of the parasite in the mother's blood greatly increased the likelihood that these women would give birth to a boy - in some cases by as much as two boys for every three births.
Interestingly, the probability of a male birth increased with higher levels of toxoplasma antibodies. The researchers speculate that the increased survival of male embryos in infected women may be explained by toxoplasmosis' modulating and suppressing effects on the immune system.
Could T. gondii be stealthily engineering a male gender-preferenced world made up of schizophrenics and neurotics? Perhaps, but the researchers caution that while toxoplasmosis appears to be the cause of the increase in male births, they cannot establish cause and effect. "An independent confirmation of this conclusion by a manipulative experiment [by experimental infection of animals] is necessary," they suggest.
I meant women. That's what I meant.
"Up to 45% of American women between the ages of 20 and 39 have already been exposed to Toxoplasma and are therefore immune. But in mothers who first acquire Toxoplasma infection during their pregnancy, about one-third to one-half of their infants born to mothers are also infected. Toxoplasma infection of the fetus is least common, but the disease is most severe, if the mother has been infected during the first trimester of pregnancy. Toxoplasma infection is most common, but the disease is least severe or without symptoms, if the infection occurs during the third trimester. Most women infected during pregnancy have no
symptoms of the infection themselves, but there is about a 40% chance that the fetus will acquire the infection, and be born prematurely or even stillborn. In about 10% of these cases, severe neurological or eye disease will result. Toxoplasma infection results in over three thousand human congenital infections annually in the United States, most of them with no symptoms. In symptomatic individuals, symptoms may appear at different times: at birth, or weeks, months, or even years later."
http://mt.essortment.com/whatistoxoplas_rhjv.htm
I seem to remember from nursing school that over all more boys are born but they don't survive the first year as well.
I can picture couples in China eating cat feces before reading this.
I find this to be a rather curious sentence. Are they saying that males are schizophrenic and neurotic? Well, women know they are, but.... :o)
I find myself in an interesting position. I have cats, but am more likely to have acquired the bacteria (if indeed I have it!) by eating raw hamburger meat when I was a kid. But then maybe the alcohol in the beer I drank to wash it down killed the germs.
Oh come on - it's a Slavonian thing...like head cheese...very cultural. LOL!
My son is visiting us from New York and has been describing to us a cat named Neiko there who actually has his own toothbrush and regularly brushes his teeth. When he did an incatonation of the cat brushing his teeth, I laughed so hard I almost upchucked my dinner.
Steak tartare - yummy!
That's the spirit!
So naturally the liberal solution to the imbalance is to turn surplus men into “women.”
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