This Cat Parasite Can Infect Humans, and You Can Get It From Litter Boxes or Unwashed Veggies

The main dishes to remember on the parasite of cats that can infect humans

• A cat parasite that can infect humans is called toxoplasm and it is a parasite that can live in all cat species. The parasite can spread to almost all other birds and mammals, not only humans, on earth, in particular by contact with infected excrement or the consumption of raw meat.
• This cat parasite can cause serious illness, similar to severe food poisoning, and even death.
• Toxoplasm can cause behavioral changes in a host, in particular by increasing the host’s trend to take risks.

A deadly parasite that depends on cats can infect humans and cause health problems for some with weakened immune systems, even killing people when they eat infected meat. He can also move to the unborn child of a mother.

The toxoplasma parasite is a protozoan that belongs to the same family as other unicellular organisms, such as Plasmodium – the organism that causes malaria. Like malaria, toxoplasma has a very complicated life cycle that involves several hosts, causing a disease called toxoplasmosis. He also has several reproductive strategies – toxoplasms can both be reproduced sexually and clone himself.

The final host of toxoplasma is felines – everything, lions and tigers with domestic cats. They are called final because cats are the only hosts in which toxoplasm can be sexually reproduced. The parasites go through their sexual stages inside the feline guts, producing eggs which, in protozoa, are called oocysts.

The oocysts go out in the environment by caca from chat, and once there, there are one to two years there.

“These parasitic eggs are so robust in the environment – they have completely contaminated our planet,” explains Bill Sullivan, microbiologist at the University of Indiana who studies toxoplasmosis.

The parasite of the cat that transfers to humans

Secondary hosts, which include almost all birds and mammals on the planet, can be infected by ingesting oocysts.

This could happen by eating fruits or vegetables not washed from a garden where an infected cat has poop, or children could put them on their hands while playing in the sandbox, ingesting them by accident by touching their face or eating without washing their hands. People with cats can also contract it from the modification of cat litter.

If parasites are found in non -cat hosts, they have another strategy to reproduce. In other mammals or birds, parasites form cysts in the tissue or organs. If humans eat insufficient or raw meat that contains these microscopic cysts, they can be infected with the parasite. This usually causes softer cases of food poisoning, but if too many cysts are consumed, it can kill people.

“It is one of the deadliest food poisonings in the world,” explains Sullivan.

How the parasite infects his host

Humans – and all animals with hot blood – which contract the parasite by eating infected meat, insufficiently cooked or by ingesting the eggs of the environment will have forever.

“The parasite generally does not make the animal very sick, but you are stuck with that for life after that,” explains Sullivan.

For some selected animals that have not changed resistance to parasite, the disease can be fatal. This is the case with many Australian animals and with marine mammals, known as Sullivan. As for humans, some sources believe that around a third of the world’s population is infected with toxoplasmes.

Learn more: Thanks to a Ténias parasite, European ants live for a long time, soft lives

What are the signs of toxoplasmosis in humans?

In soft cases, it is difficult to say that people are infected with toxoplasma parasites, because food poisoning can resemble other types of stomach bedbugs. But disease after consuming raw meat is a sign of infection.

Usually, the parasite remains latent in most infected humans – it infects cells, integrates into microscopic cysts – and most of them stay there. However, they can clone and proliferate in humans with a compromised immune system. For example, doctors have seen many cases of severe toxoplasmosis in patients with AIDS during the 80s and 1990 pandemic.

“When patients with HIV have lost their immune system, those who had toxoplasmosis cysts in their brain and their hearts had toxoplasmosis repeatedly,” said Sullivan.

When reactivated, toxoplasmosis symptoms include fever, fatigue, numbness, convulsions or facial paralysis. When he infects the eyes, toxoplasms can cause fuzzy vision, blindness and eye pain.

Can toxoplasmosis affect pregnancy?

If women have contracted the parasite long before pregnancy, their children to be born are generally not at risk, as they develop antibodies against the most serious effects. But when women contract the disease for the first time during pregnancy, the parasite can cross the placenta, causing serious life problems for children. In the worst cases, it can cause miscarriage, congenital congenital malformations, mortinagances and infantile death.

Problems after birth for infected children may include vision or blindness disorders, cognitive problems and hydrocephalus – brain swelling.

Although rare, around 400 to 4,000 children were born each year with congenital toxoplasmosis in the United States.

To avoid this risk, Sullivan advises that pregnant women who are not infected should take additional precautions, such as avoiding changing the cat’s litter if possible and washing hands after gardening, for example. American disease control and prevention centers (CDC) recommend a number of other measures to prevent infection during pregnancy.

Despite these risks, doctors in the United States generally do not exceed toxoplasmosis as doctors in other countries do in pregnant women. Sullivan sees it as an error.

“There is a very easy and inexpensive blood test,” says Sullivan.

Does a cat parasite affect human behavior?

In addition to the potential health risks that toxoplasm can cause, evidence in rodents show that the parasite can also affect the behavior of infected hosts.

The tests have revealed that rodents infected with the parasite are less likely to be afraid of cats and more likely to take risks. It probably serves the parasite well, because it makes the life cycle complete.

“If the parasite enters a rodent brain and modifies the animal to take more risks and be less afraid of things, this rodent is more likely to be eaten by a cat,” explains Sullivan.

It may also work for humans, which can also be targets of this behavior change. There are reasons to believe that humans – or more likely our ancestors of distant monkey – were much more often on feline menus, especially at the time when giant saber -tooth cats still prowled the earth.

In these prehistoric times, the small human ancestors infected with the parasite may have made an easier meal for big felines, so it is possible that we were not only accidental targets. Toxoplasms had everything to win by inducing Homo erectus Or our older ancestors to take more risks around giant predators. Sullivan says that there are examples of infected chimpanzees that are less afraid of cheetahs or leopards, for example.

In addition to taking risks, toxoplasmosis has also been linked to other problems. Toxoplasma cysts in the brain, in particular, may not be mild.

“More recent relationships have correlated these latent cysts in the brain with schizophrenia and behavioral changes,” explains Sullivan.

Does toxoplasmosis have a remedy?

In a word, no – nothing can definitively eliminate the toxoplasms of human bodies. The parasite is very good to hide when it enters its latent cyst phase. Since the cysts are microscopic, it is almost impossible to spot them, although specialists can see signs of scars in the brain and eyes if the parasites are there.

Treatment using antibiotics and antiparasitics can control your body’s parasites when symptoms are more serious, but in most people, no treatment is necessary.

There are ways to avoid contracting it first.

“You can certainly help your cat to acquire it by keeping it inside and not nourishing it raw meat,” explains Sullivan.

Avoid insufficient or raw red meat – dishes such as steak tartare, for example – can also reduce your chances of contracting the disease. Those who are immunocompromised in particular should take additional precautions during gardening or modification of the cat litter.

This article does not offer medical advice and should be used for information purposes only.

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