No evidence for airborne transmission of Toxoplasma gondii in a very high prevalence area in Lancaster County
| Autor: | Patrick Donnelly, Abhishek Wadhawan, Aline Dagdag, Hira Mohyuddin, Dolores E. Hill, Teodor T. Postolache, Jeffrey L Jones |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
030231 tropical medicine Clinical Biochemistry Population Toxoplasma gondii Biochemistry Airborne transmission Article law.invention Microbiology 03 medical and health sciences air filters 0302 clinical medicine law parasitic diseases Seroprevalence Bioassay airborne transmission education Polymerase chain reaction Air filter 2. Zero hunger education.field_of_study Crystallography biology Inoculation biology.organism_classification 3. Good health 030104 developmental biology QD901-999 Molecular Medicine dust |
| Zdroj: | Pteridines Pteridines, Vol 29, Iss 1, Pp 172-178 (2018) |
| ISSN: | 2195-4720 0933-4807 |
| Popis: | Background: Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) has been associated with acute food-borne illness, chronic low-grade inflammation, neuropsychiatric conditions and reactivation of chronic latent infection in immunocompetent hosts. Primary infection with T. gondii in pregnant women can lead to congenital toxoplasmosis. In addition to well-known oral tissue-cyst or oocyst ingestion, we hypothesized that the very high prevalence of T. gondii in certain populations exposed to agricultural dust could be, in part, a consequence of airborne infection with oocysts. Methods: We collected environmental dust samples from an area with a reportedly high T. gondii seroprevalence in the Old Order Amish population, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Samples included: a) air filters from air-conditioning units; b) swabs of settled dust; and c) vacuum filters containing airborne field dust. Pools of the swabs and shredded sub-samples of the air filters were fed to pigs, with inoculation into mice of heart tissue from seroconverted pigs. We also investigated the presence of T. gondii DNA using PCR amplification. Results: Only one pig seroconverted. However, bioassay of pig heart tissue further inoculated into mice showed no evidence of T. gondii infection. Consistently, no evidence of T. gondii DNA was revealed in any sample. Conclusions: No evidence of airborne transmission was found in the environmental samples that were examined. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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