No association between latent toxoplasmosis and multiple body measures in U.S. adults

Keywords

toxoplasmosis, body measures, intracellular parasite, infectrions

Abstract

Toxoplasma gondii (Nicolle et Manceaux, 1908) is an intracellular parasite that can cause ongoing latent infection persisting for the duration of a non-definitive host's life. Affecting approximately one-third of the world's population, latent toxoplasmosis has been associated with neuropsychological outcomes and a previous report suggested an association between latent toxoplasmosis and adult height. Given the large number of people with latent toxoplasmosis and its potential associations with human height, we sought to better understand the association between latent toxoplasmosis and human morphology by evaluating seropositivity for T. gondii and multiple body measures reported in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (NHANES III) and in the more recent continuous NHANES data sets from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for which data on T. gondii are available. In these analyses, latent toxoplasmosis was not associated with any of the body measures assessed in the NHANES datasets even after taking into account interactions between latent toxoplasmosis and testosterone suggesting that in these samples, latent toxoplasmosis is not associated with adult morphology including height.

Original Publication Citation

Berrett, Andrew N., Shawn D. Gale, Lance D. Erickson, Bruce Brown, and Dawson W. Hedges. (2016). “No association between latent toxoplasmosis and multiple body measures in U.S. adults.” Folia Parasitologica. 63:034. DOI: 10.14411/fp.2016.034.

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2016-10

Permanent URL

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/5587

Publisher

Folia Parasitologica

Language

English

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Sociology

University Standing at Time of Publication

Associate Professor

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