Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2288095

by mattmaroon • 17 years ago

67 46 17 years ago

abcnews.go.com

zeynel1• 17 years ago

Obviously there is a limit how much cats will take being humiliated as bad spellers all around the internet by humans. Revenge is here.

henning• 17 years ago

The cheezburgers are just an elaborate ruse.

ajju• 17 years ago

I thought this might be bull so I googled it. Apparently the fact that these parasites affect human behavior is proven! How widespread this is is up for discussion. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol9no11/03-0143.htm

albemuth• 17 years ago

I'm having a hard time thinking this is not a joke myself

twir• 17 years ago

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/231/

erlanger2• 17 years ago

This parasite is indeed real and widespread, and the reason you don't notice its effects in others is because its effects are rather minor, resulting from small brain infections and increased dopamine at certain sites (I had no luck pinpointing the location of these, unfortunately).

The most agreed-upon effect appears to be that the parasite results in decreased neophilia. What a sensationalist story like this one will not tell you is that the observed effects are "rather low":

Our results showed that CMV infected subjects had lower scores in the personality dimension novelty seeking than the CMV-free subjects. Novelty seeking in infected subjects negatively correlated with levels of anti-CMV antibodies. Negative correlation was also found between novelty seeking and Toxoplasma-infection in Prague, while in villages and smaller cities the correlation was not significant. The effect of both infections, although highly significant, was rather low, explaining about 2 % of total variability of the novelty seeking in our experimental set.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/5/54

Further, while cats are this parasite's original host, it seems that you're as likely to become infected form undercooked meat as from water polluted with cat fecal matter. I guess that's not as much fun as saying "cats are bad, now everyone fight!" I love how every media outlet picked this up as soon ('06, granted) as possible but it took Reuters a month to report on conclusive findings that marijuana consumption results in lower incidence of head and neck cancer.

biohacker423• 17 years ago

This is old news and fluff. For a less fluffy article:

Increased incidence of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected military drivers and protective effect RhD molecule revealed by a large-scale prospective cohort study.

Look here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/9/72

Courtesy of the hard science sub-reddit.

For those with too little time to read the actual paper, here's the results summary:

We confirmed, using for the first time a prospective cohort study design, increased risk of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected subjects and demonstrated a strong protective effect of RhD positivity against the risk of traffic accidents posed by latent toxoplasmosis. Our results show that RhD-negative subjects with high titers of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies had a probability of a traffic accident of about 16.7%, i.e. a more than six times higher rate than Toxoplasma-free or RhD-positive subjects.

erlanger2• 17 years ago

In case I missed it, did that study control for location? I know that the other study stated that it did not have much (if any) background information on the candidates, but did say that infection rates for the parasite are higher in villages and small towns. I think that this is a significant lurking variable in any traffic accident analysis, and needs to be considered: In my experience, rural folk are less exposed to some of the more "creative" driving situations than those who live closer in.

10ren• 17 years ago

So, the cat killed curiosity?

igorhvr• 17 years ago

How do I know whether I am infected or not?

eru• 17 years ago

From the article:

> So after I submitted the paper I put down my 30 bucks and got a blood test," he says. "It came out negative. I was so surprised."

nalbyuites• 17 years ago

Thanks for clearing this up. Because I have been wanting to keep a cat since forever. Taught me not to jump to conclusions without research.

swombat• 17 years ago

Come on. This is not HN material. What's next? Lolcats?

coconutrandom3• 17 years ago

sadly, yes.

coconutrandom3• 17 years ago

happily yes?

gojomo4• 17 years ago

I find new discoveries about incurable diseases which change human personalities on the scale of individuals and whole societies very HN-worthy, by the same standard as other science/medical discoveries.

Unfortunately, this is (1) old news; and (2) especially prone to obvious, knee-jerk LOLcats jokes -- there were already three before your comment. So I have mixed feelings about its topicality.

timr• 17 years ago

Some of us made LOLcat jokes because the story is old news. Maybe they weren't funny to you -- if so, mea culpa.

The danger of demonizing bad jokes is that eventually, nobody will make any jokes at all; they can't all be funny. Then we're just a bunch of annoyingly high-strung geeks being Very Serious about matters which have absolutely no relevance.

electromagnetic5• 17 years ago

Firstly it's a very old discovery, just the effects of latent toxoplasmosis are becoming more newsworthy in tabloids and fluff pieces, traditionally the whole encephalitis was what people worried about.

Toxoplasmosis' only agreed upon (and still alleged) effect is a decrease in neophilia, which is linked to monoamine oxidase A a product of the so called 'warrior gene' that is far more prevalent in society than toxoplasmosis infections (33% genetic prevalence amongst European whites IIRC and ~60% in Asian/Pacific Islanders).

Oh and BTW toxoplasmosis is easily curable, it's regularly cured in humans and in animals that carry it used for food production (Pigs, Sheep and farmed Deers). The reason doctors don't treat it, is because you're safer to have latent toxoplasmosis than none at all, not only can it lead to miscarriages in women, but the chance of encephalitis increases with decreased immune function. So if you get toxoplasmosis when you're healthy, like most people, you'll be fine, but if doctors go around curing it you'll get reinfected and seriously increase your risk for death.

Ironically the mild production of Monoamine Oxidase A is known for a decrease in danger-seeking behaviour, but extreme production (witnessed in people with the Warrior Gene) is known for an increase in danger-seeking behaviour. Toxoplasmosis apparently acts like the warrior gene for mice, but will in fact likely prolong the life of a human infected with latent toxoplasmosis.

kirubakaran• 17 years ago

May be you are a cat trying to keep us in the dark. Good try, but the cat is out of the bag.

joshu• 17 years ago

Loltaxoplasmosis. It is transmitted by lolcat feces.

pavs• 17 years ago

I think a fair question is what kind of topic would you classify as "HN material", be a bit specific if you can.

fnid• 17 years ago

There's another instance of this where flukes infect ants making them want to climb blades of grass where they are eaten by cows. Here's a diagram of the lifecycle of this odd creature:

http://workforce.cup.edu/Buckelew/dicrocoelium_dendriticum_i...

jerf• 17 years ago

A sci-fi story that springboards off of this parasite and its effects, which should appeal to some hacker types: http://www.davidwgoldman.com/Invasion_of_the_Pattern_Snatche...

rbanffy2• 17 years ago

A really good one! Thanks for the pointer!

yannis• 17 years ago

'Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.'

Although I do not doubt the infection rates I am sceptical about the conclusions. Any woman that does not LOVE cats is obviously not warm and attentive of others and I would like to see more details on the men samples; for example were they married to the above ladies or not. Do guilty and insecure people tend to have cats as pets?

Anyway I love cats since I was a kid and I am male! Worth the infection if I have it and perhaps the reason that so far I have not catch AIDS!

jrockway• 17 years ago

Anyway I love cats since I was a kid and I am male! Worth the infection if I have it and perhaps the reason that so far I have not catch AIDS!

I like cats too, but I feel like I am missing something here. How did you get from "I love cats" to not getting AIDS?

DavidSJ• 17 years ago

I think the idea is he loves cats, not women.

thesecret• 17 years ago

That's why pregnant women are told to stay away from cats during term

pyre• 17 years ago

Not cats, but cat feces. (i.e. she shouldn't be changing her cat's -- or cats' -- litter box)

dylanz• 17 years ago

My friend who's a 24 year old (extremely cute) female, who eats your Standard American Diet (but on the healthy side), took a 40 day juice fast about a year ago.

After about day 30, she passed a huge ball of worms in her stool. Let me emphasize "huge". Like, a babies fist. Needless to say, she had some parasites.

I now fear the juice fast... and, in a weird way... her :)

delackner• 17 years ago

Curiosity and revulsion combine. What exactly about an all juice food regimen would kill off that ball of parasites?

bhousel• 17 years ago

Yeah, ditto on the curiosity and revulsion. Is this a normal occurrence when juice fasting? What kind of juice? And when it was all over, any after-effects?

Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do

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