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Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by Tangurena2 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @08:43AM (#38530564)
There is a vaccine for toxoplasmosis, but is only available in New Zealand & Australia for sheep. Toxoplasmosis infection in sheep causes pregnant sheep to miscarry (aka "spontaneous abortions").
Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by halfmatthalfcat on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:36AM (#38531252)
A risk I’m willing to take for a lifetime of love, companionship and observing their infinite curiosity. (Definitely not written by an infected toxoplasmosis human)
Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by omginternets on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:58AM (#38531635)
>The CDC also recommends changing the cat's litter box daily

Yeah, I'll get right on that. Sheesh, the risk-sensitivity of the modern medical profession is a bit ridiculous, sometimes.

Edit: I'm interpreting this as "throw out all the litter and replace it with fresh litter", which anyone who owns a cat will surely agree is insanity.

Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by dweymouth on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @11:52AM (#38533401)
Not to mention that eating undercooked meat is a bigger infection risk than living with a pet cat, especially an indoor-only cat.
Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by sonicanatidae on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:22AM (#38531994)
+1. That would be insanity and needless. Most people are exposed to more things like this, outside the home.
Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by BizarroLand on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @06:05PM (#38538187)
Self-cleaning litter boxes all the way. House smells better, cat smells better, less misery for you.

If you can afford it, it is a must have.

Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by koheripbal on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @11:28AM (#38533027)
It's crazy that this is so widespread, has brain disease implications, and yet there is no treatment for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide currently infected.

What is likely worse is that they can only document the worst cases, and cannot measure the subtler impacts on seemingly healthy infected people.

Maybe this is a major cause of ADD, or depression, or dyslexia, or autism, etc... we haven't done the research, so we aren't even bothering to test or treat a clearly extremely common infection. Its stupid.

Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by hammyhavoc on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @08:17PM (#38551686)
Uh, neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD and autism are not something that happens later in life from an infection, it's something people are born with, and it's almost certainly down to genes; do some reading on MTHFR. Your comment is alarmist nonsense that isn't much better than "vaccines cause autism".
Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by petra on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @02:16PM (#38535594)
A more recent surveying diseases which T.gondii is implicated in:

https://twitter.com/GC_Milne/status/1457831246344691718

It also has a case where curing a female from t.gondii(right after she got it) cured her depression.

Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by pvaldes on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @03:06PM (#38536244)
They keep repeating that since years, but we are still waiting for the proofs
Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by pvaldes on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @07:16AM (#38542854)
> Results showed that an individual infected with T. gondii was almost twice as likely to develop schizophrenia

T. gondii came for you. Please, start to panic and howl right now while running to buy my product.

Lets talk about p-hacking:

About 50% of the population had Toxoplasma gondii at some point in their lives

0.35% of the population are schizophrenic.

If Toxoplasma gondii really causes schizophrenia the correlation effect is not really strong or consistent. Without T. gondii "would be" 0.17%.

As the huge majority of the people that suffered T. gondii infection never develops schizophrenia we could also safely conclude that having cat pets PROTECTS against schizophrenia.

Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by kelipso on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @07:36AM (#38543036)
No...using same argument, you would also safely conclude that smoking protects against lung cancer.
Re:Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia by pvaldes on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @11:27AM (#38546017)
Exact. We could say it and it would be also wrong and silly.

Because correlation is not causation necessarily, and a third actor (ehum... alcohol, drugs) could be creating that increase in mental illness.

How many people that "does not have a pet cat" is schizophrenic?