Folia Parasitologica 52[3] 199-204 (2005) | DOI: 10.14411/fp.2005.026

Influence of latent "asymptomatic" toxoplasmosis on body weight of pregnant women

Jaroslav Flegr¹, Štěpánka Hrdá¹, Petr Kodym²

¹ Department of Parasitology, Charles University, Viničná 7, 128 44 Prague, Czech Republic

² National Reference Laboratory for Toxoplasmosis, National Institute of Public Health, Šrobárova 48, 100 42 Prague, Czech Republic

The latent toxoplasmosis is usually considered to be asymptomatic, however, this paradigm has never been rigorously tested. Here we searched for symptoms of deterioration of physical health (decrease of weight) in infected people by analysis of clinical records of 758 women tested for toxoplasmosis in the 16th week of gravidity. Toxoplasma-positive women have a lower body weight in the 16th week of gravidity (p = 0.02) than Toxoplasma-negative women. Moreover, a negative correlation between weight and the duration of toxoplasmosis was found in a subset of 174 Toxoplasma-positive women (p = 0.04), suggesting that slow and cumulative effects of latent toxoplasmosis, rather than a transient effect of acute toxoplasmosis, are responsible for the decreased weight of infected subjects. Longer duration of gravidity estimated from the date of last menstruation in the set of Toxoplasma-positive women in the 16th week of gravidity estimated with ultrasonography (p = 0.04) suggests a possibility of retarded foetal growth in Toxoplasma-positive women. The prevalence of latent toxoplasmosis is extremely high. Therefore, even its mild symptoms such as the decreased body weight in Toxoplasma-positive pregnant women might in fact indicate an unrecognized serious public health problem.

Keywords: parasite, Toxoplasma, latent toxoplasmosis, pathology, permutation test, gravidity

Received: May 20, 2004; Accepted: September 10, 2004; Published: June 1, 2005  Show citation