Folia Parasitologica 46[1] 22-28 (1999)

Changes in the personality profile of young women with latent toxoplasmosis

Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček

Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Viničná 7, 128 44 Prague, Czech Republic

Latent toxoplasmosis is the most widespread parasite infection in developed and developing countries. The prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection varies mostly between 20 to 80% in different territories. This form of toxoplasmosis is generally considered to be asymptomatic. Recently published results, however, suggest that the personality profiles of infected subjects differ from those of uninfected controls. These results, however, were obtained on non-standard populations (biologists or former acute toxoplasmosis patients). Here we studied the personality profiles of 191 young women tested for anti-Toxoplasma immunity during gravidity. The results showed that the differences between Toxoplasma-negative and Toxoplasma-positive subjects exits also in this sample of healthy women. The subjects with latent toxoplasmosis had higher intelligence, lower guilt proneness, and possibly also higher ergic tension. The difference in several other factors (desurgency/surgency, alaxia/protension, naiveté/shrewdness, and self-sentiment integration) concerned changes in the variances, rather than the mean values of the factors.

Keywords: Toxoplasma gondii, behaviour, Cattell's questionnaire, manipulation hypothesis, permutation test

Received: May 5, 1998; Accepted: August 25, 1998; Published: March 1, 1999  Show citation