Slashdot Mirror
Cat Parasite May Increase Risk of Suicide In Humans
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Maryland analyzing meticulous data collected by Danish authorities have identified a positive correlation between suicides among women with infection with the fairly common parasite T. gondii. Carriers were 53 percent more likely to commit suicide in a sample of 45,000 Danish women monitored for over a decade (researchers believe that the same correlation likely exists for men). Increased susceptibility to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder was also discovered. The physiological mechanism has not been determined, although some speculation centers around changes to dopamine levels. Two intriguing aspects were noted: 1) human infection often (but not always) begins by exposure to cats carrying the parasite, for example, by changing an infected animal's litter; and 2) the parasite spreads itself by infecting the nervous system of rodents, causing them to become suicidally attracted to feline odors which will increase the likelihood of their hosts being eaten by cats, whose digestive tracts provide the preferred environment for parasite reproduction."
Crazy cat women.
...but it's still okay to eat cats, right? I mean, as long as you avoid the digestive organs?
Do the crazy cat ladies have cats because they are crazy, or are they crazy because they have cats?
Which came first? Crazy cat lady got 20 cats because she is crazy, or cat lady went crazy because she has 20 cats?
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
sure, this looks like valid research, until you see the citations
Resurch dun by Carnegie Meloncat Institute fellows:
Hovercat
Longcat
Dunecat
with speshul thx 2 cieling cat hoo make all tings possible
Judging from my (and I gather I am not alone in the /. type "social" circle) experience with women, this fits it to a tee. Perhaps I should start looking for a high enough cliff because I don't want to be compared to rats!
(obligatory)
But what if terrorists find a way to use this?
I hope my ex-wife has got it. And she probably has.
They are a menace to public health.
That's what people would say if cats were ugly, anyway. But they are cute, so they are permitted to carry disease. Only ugly species are eligable for culling.
Are the rodents supposed to then get it from the dead bodies littering the bottom of the bridge / canyon / etc?
I thought we were the parasites
The first stage in the evolution of the Gou'ald has begun.
The purpose of the behavioral change in rats is to get the rat gobbled up by a cat so that the parasite could reproduce. I wonder if toxoplasmosis in humans promotes reckless and suicidal behavior. This would give the parasite another opportunity to reproduce. Just imagine 50,000 years ago a suicidal or reckless person decided to taunt a hungry tiger. One strike by the annoyed tiger, and the toxoplasmosis would have access to a warm cat gut to reproduce. Isn't nature wonderful
T. gondi is known for its ability to change human behaviour like inducing depression and causing loss of attention. Its only goal is to get you eaten by its next host so suicide fits in nicely.
and no one has offed themselves in my house. Maybe smoking dope counteracts the parasite :)
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Once the cats perfect this virus it's all over...
Suicidally? Being attracted to something known to shorten your lifespan doesn't mean you're suicidal. Take one example: Americans gorging themselves on McDonald's, then flooding hospitals with heart disease cases in an attempt to stay alive. If they were suicidal, they'd just keep eating more burgers and look emo about it till they died.
So, I mean like, does this mean if you have, like, a liger, cleaning his cat box will, like, blow up the whole, like, neighborhood? Or maybe, like, the parasites will, like eat my face? Gosh. Idiots! I'm sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
This virus originates in rodents, and feeds on tissue (dead tissue).
In order to increase the food it developed a trick to attack the area of the brains related to danger/sexual "high".
In rats/mice it cause them to not run away from the cats (there are claims it makes the mice behave as if they are sexually aroused by cats)
In human males it causes lousy risk management, so that people infected are prone to dangerous activities (it appears >60% of donored organs are toxoplasmosis infected),
All of which indicates it attacks complex and subtle parts of nervous system.
So it is no surprise it attacks human females by this being prone to suicide.
Kinda makes sense.
WNYCs podcast RadioLab did an excellent segment having to do with the same parasite (and cats) on an episode entitled 'Parasites,' highly recommend.
by changing an infected animal's litter
Now I know that they are not going to be the same between men and women. A woman is likely to change their litter box more than once a year; which is what a man will do.
isn't this creepily like the plot of why humans needed to domesticate apes because some plague wiped out all cats and dogs.....
well this takes care of cats
KEEP THAT CRAP away form me too.....might also explain in said movies how apes with a few guns were able to kill off most humans they all went nuts.....
Also evidence of correlation with religion ; a higher incidence than average amongst Muslims and Christians (a shame this study didn't assay Atheists though).
I was sure I have read that on Cracked.com years ago. Can't seem to find it now :(
getting close to a pussy can get you a parasite that makes you suicidally attracted to pussy, in rodents that is
A 50% increase is statistically significant, but in absolute numbers wouldn't make that much of a difference, certainly well under the "killed by cars" number, and we don't care enough about that to actually fix the problem.
What I see out of this, and others like it, is that there are a large number of diseases we get infected with over our lives that never leave us, and have effects well into our old age. We wouldn't have "evolved" out of them because the evolutionary pressure for things that don't affect us until after we've passed on our genes is small and indirect. How many "diseases" and infections do we have by the time we are die? What would our old age be like if we managed to avoid/cure them all?
Learn to love Alaska
Apparently a lesser known fact is that Toxoplasma are protozoa, not viruses.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Toxoplasma is not a virus.
I think it T. gondii attacks some regulatory function in the brain that inhibits risk-taking behavior, which for rodents is associated via different mechanisms with the detection of cats and other predators.
The unusual transmission mechanisms of the parasite were probably known before this Maryland/Denmark study which has to do with the effect of T. gondii on the mental health of human hosts.
Ok, that rodents are driven to "suicidal" behavior by seeking out a cat isn't the same kind of suicide drive, almost certainly.
The rodent probably isn't being driven to despair, where it makes a calculus to kill itself. It's probably just thinking running up to that cat is a good idea instead of a bad one.
Rhetorical fail in the article.
Or success, I supppose. :(
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Of course, my evidence consists of multiple repeated viewings of Tom and Jerry, Sylvester and Tweety, and Pinky and the Brain, but according to my research, it's exposure to Mince and Rats that creates suicidal tendencies in Cats.
Just saying.
Narf.
I can see the fnords!
Maybe cat loving ladies have this parasite and they give it to their cats instead.
Natural selection happens.
Shit i have 2 cats...
FUCK EM!
Number 1 was the cat
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A relatively simple method would be a feedback loop. The parasite could stimulate dopamine receptors whenever it is exposed to compounds linked to feline odor. Since the parasite is already in the nervous system, it would be pretty easy for it to be hanging around the blood-brain barrier or the nasal system to receive the odors first hand even.
Ever see the dumb shit people will do coked up? Now reduce the cognitive inhibitions to the level of a rodent. Chemically, it's all the same.
There are numerous studies on the behavioral effects of toxplasmosis infection on humans.
It has been proven that owning a lighter will increasce your chances of getting lung cancer. Be safe! Use matches!
There is no "Uninformative" to mod you down.
Yeah they've done plenty of studies linking various changes in human behavior to toxoplasmosis infection. Your claim is so strange that I almost wonder if you're part of the pro-toxoplasmosis conspiracy or maybe you're a toxoplasmosis forcing a crazy cat lady to type these things.
No it's not. TFA states "positive correlation", that does not mean it has been proven, but just they are seeing an interesting trend.
It's a witch!!!!
The Danish study is just the latest in a long series of studies which demonstrate a correlation between toxoplasmosis seropositivity and psychiatric problems-- it's been linked to schizophrenia and ADHD, and so on. Wikipedia has a good article on the topic.
It's pretty interesting. Apparently something like 10% of the US population is seropositive for toxo. The infection is thought to be "contained" immunologically, but encysted organisms are still present in muscle and nervous tissue, and the process of "containment" may induce a subtle inflammatory state which affects a broad variety of neurotransmitters (not just dopamine). It's also possible that the causation works the other way-- the people who get chronic infections may have something about their immune system that is different to begin with, and the difference might predispose them to psychiatric problems independently of toxo infection. Good discussion of all that in the Danish study, which was published in Archives of General Psych and seems to be non-paywalled.
What will be really interesting is to see what happens if you identify psychiatric patients with chronic toxo and try to eradicate the toxo with antibiotics-- do their psych symptoms improve? There have been at least two studies I could find (one where it helped and one where it didn't), and apparently there's a large-scale study getting started in the UK.
The rodent's brain is already wired to recognize and respond to the odor, so the hard part was already done. All the parasite needed to do was modify or override the response.
Subj says it all. Others may have noticed the same.
Could those in the extra 53% suicidal women have suffered earlier miscarriages, by any chance?
For people who are wondering, it looks like they didn't have a good control group. So here is how they answered some potential objections:
1) What if depressed people get cats, and that's why they have the parasite? Did they check people who have cats but aren't depressed?
It's probably not related to cats, because most people who get this parasite get it from undercooked meat.
2) What if depressed people are more susceptible to this parasite because they are depressed? What if non-depressed people are capable of fighting off the parasite with a stronger immune system?
There was no correlation between people who had the parasite, and people who had a history of mental illness. (Also, correlates with other studies, that might have had better control groups, I'm too lazy to check them out to see).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Hello, looks like you've thought up an objection within 5 seconds of reading the summary. Given that these scientists have spent several years working on this project, you don't think they could have also thought of something similar, do you? Oh wait, they did.
Next time, please at least read the article before spreading your inanity. Scientists usually think of the simple stuff.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You seem to know about this field. Can you translate this part for me?
Separate logistic regression for RhD-negative subjects showed a 2.53 times higher risk of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected than Toxoplasma-free subjects (CI95: 1.12–5.7, t = 2.23, P = 0.026). http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/9/72
Are they really saying that this is causing "2.53 times higher risk of traffic accidents" among their infected population of Czech male military draftees???
Imagine the repercussions if this is found to be also true in other populations (not that it will be, and not that correlation equals causation, but...):
Car Insurance rates (or driver licenses) could start depending on the results of those blood tests. Criminal sentencing could be affected by the results of those tests. And at the very minimum, the next time you'd fill out a questionnaire for getting car insurance, or filling out an application for becoming a truck driver or operating heavy machinery, or applying to get into the military, you'd be asked all kinds of questions about your history with cats (whether you owned one, your significant other owned one, or whether your family ever owned one while you were growing up).
It was popular in the 1970's, you can go to the doctor and get the cure.... ;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
http://www.nursingtimes.net/home/clinical-specialisms/infection-control/cat-ladies-suicide-risk-probed/5046843.article?blocktitle=Behind-the-Headlines&contentID=4530
British rednecks
I know what you're trying to say, but this is a contradiction in terms. There is no sun in Britain to give anyone a red neck.
and type in 10.000%. Result from google's calculator: 10.00000% = 0.1
how do we interpret that result, non-American?
Crazy or just plain HOT? You decide :)
I also seem to remember that the same parasite can cause a whole host of problem in a developing fetus too.
Om, nomnomnom...
In addition to it being torture on the animal it will have all sorts of negative effects on humans, and this is just one of them. Having animals as "pets" essentially holding them prisoner. We have come to a point we no longer need animals for anything whether it is food, clothing, companionship, rescue, etc. Most countries now have a ban on having humans as slaves so why not have a ban on animals as slave as well?
...watching you go crazy.
I think it T. gondii attacks some regulatory function in the brain that inhibits risk-taking behavior, which for rodents is associated via different mechanisms with the detection of cats and other predators.
The rodents in question remain afraid of open spaces and unfamiliar foods. The only thing that appears to be targeted is the fear of cat urine.
Higher suicide in cat "owners" simply correlates to orders to compose a death poem and commit seppuku to regain honor.
OBEY TEH KITTEH DAIMYO.
Yes well, I've had multiple cats simultaneously since over a decade whilst being free of suicidal thoughts or mental disorders (even if I do say so myself), so this finding shouldn't discourage anyone from having them.
I can't help thinking that I've heard this before some years ago. Am I right or is this really a new finding?
-- Cheers!
I already have, multiple times, if you know what I mean.
Dakhaas literally means roofrabbit and refers to the fact that if you cut the legs, you can pass cat for rabbit. Not in practice anymore but we did have the hungerwinter here thanks to the Americans being to scared to advance and leave the British and Polish forces without backup.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Check your expensive coffee!
Suicidally? Being attracted to something known to shorten your lifespan doesn't mean you're suicidal.
It depends on the circumstances. In this case I would argue that it is suicidal because the parasite wants the mice to get eaten by the cat hence the intended outcome of the behaviour is for the mouse to kill itself (albeit at the parasite's urging). In the case of humans the tendency to overeat was a result of our stoneage heritage when food was scarce and so eating as much as possible when it was available was a survival trait. Now it might be harmful but because the original "intention" of the trait is to increase survival it is the opposite of suicidal. We just need to wait for evolution to catch up with our new era of abundant food.
I am an aerospace engineer. If aircrafts where built with the rigorousity this study was done, every aircraft would crash.
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
"the parasite spreads itself by infecting the nervous system of rodents, causing them to become suicidally attracted to feline odors which will increase the likelihood of their hosts being eaten by cats,"
This sounds like a hack or a cheat for pandemic 2.
British rednecks I know what you're trying to say, but this is a contradiction in terms. There is no sun in Britain to give anyone a red neck.
Well, the wet collar could make your neck red and sore. Seriously though it is all too easy to get sunburn in summer in the UK, it often doesn't feel that hot but there is enough UV to burn!
This is on the level of saying crop circles are made by bored aliens instead of British rednecks with boards and strings. We don't have rednecks in Britain, you insensitive clod!
Retarded inbred scrumpy-addled yokels, fair enough, but they tend not to have shaved necks.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And single women are more likely to commit suicide.
Did i just debunk this research in 1 sentence?
When else would it cause a miscarriage, if not during pregnancy?
With large enough errors bars as in this case, 53% should be read as a random event.
Fix the title eh...
No, you do not want to learn them to flush
"do not teach your cat to flush. Although it is possible, once they learn, many seem to enjoy it and will do it all the time, even when it's not appropriate to do so as no business has been done. This wastes water."
I understand the effects of the parasite are related to cysts and the like that are produced and reside in the brain when the parasite is inactive. If you take the medication that kills the parasite, do you also get rid of the neurological effects, or is your brain possibly permanently altered?
Yeah they've done plenty of studies linking various changes in human behavior to toxoplasmosis infection.
No, they haven't really, at least not from what this article says - they've correlated certain behaviors to people with TP, that statistically don't happen (or as much) in people without the TP organism.
To link *changes* in human behavior to it, you would have to know what their behavior was *before* infection, then infect them with TP, and then observe changes in their behaviors.
How can you be certain they work via a mechanism other than the parasite?
Take a few random specimen of the felidae family.
For each specimen, compare the young baby with the adult.
- lion cub and adult lion
- kitten and adult house cat
etc.
Notice anything peculiar? Unlike the wilder specimen, house cats tend to retain much more juvenile caracteristics: bigger eyes, more fluffy. (And that works also for noise: most bigger cats tend to be silent, or occasionnaly express deep menacing roars. Only house cats (even more than alley cats) tend to meow a lot, and keep a rather high-pitched voice). etc.
We human tend to be pre-wired to be attracted to some traits (bigger eyes, high pitched voices, etc.) because that's how our babies look like. Thus we tend to find cats adorable because they share common trait with the babies that we're pre-wired to find adorable. From that point of view kittens are The Über-cats: even fluffier, even bigger eyes, even higher pitched voice, etc.
Common cats have co-evolved with human while optimising some of their characteristics to be better appreciated by humans. In a way they have "hacked" into our instinctive behaviours. They don't need parasites to achieve that, they evolved their aspect so we can't resist but find them adorable.
Note that the same could be noticed with other species which got adopted by the humans: in the canidae family compare adults dogs and wolves relative to their puppies dogs have partly evolved to look nicer and sweater. (well in the case of dogs there are other advantages too which led to humans adopting them, including social behaviour - dogs are highly social, hierarchical animals living in packs and hunting in an organised manner. Exactly like humans, thus making them interesting as hunting aids. Whereas cats are more autonomous. Their either live alone or in herds, making them more interesting as a "set and forget" solution to eradicate pests like rodent)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
For example, flouting controlled substance laws to gamble 20-30 IQ points against a little temporary euphoria - then bragging about it - that sort of thing.
You know, contrary to what your government would like to think on your side of the Atlantic pond, consuming substances doesn't automatically result in permanent irreversible brain damage. Occasional moderate and responsible consumption in adults of some of these substance cause few if any permanent problems, as shown in the countries that we have here around with slightly more tolerance or slightly more liberal approach to said substances. Like with any other substance, its all a matter of dosage. So I slightly doubt that your comment on the 23-30 IQ points has any validity.
(And the parent poster could even live in one of those countries, so his habits have absolutely nothing to do with "risk behaviours" and everything to do with bragging about how well he can keep nice plants growing on his balcony).
*BUT*
regarding the temporary euphoria: if by "smoking dope" the parent poster referred to THC-containing hemp derivative, you might be onto something.
euphoria in this class of light hallucinogenic comes from their activity on the serotonin system. Acting on the serotonin system also helps battling against depression (that's also the mecanism behind SSRI-class anti-depressors).
So it can be that the parent poster has a very light- mostly subclinical form of depression (call it dysthymia at this scale). Enough to be more attracted by cats. But also light enough that the euphoria induced by his... ahem.. "botanical"-consumption habits is enough to completely counter-act it.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
would care less about personal hygiene ofcourse, ...
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
You don't necessarily need sun. Capillary damage from constant alcohol use can cause a red neck with little sun.
My sexual experience isn't as broad as some people's, and anecdote is not the singular form of data...
...but that said, there is a strong correlation in my sexual history between women who owned cats, were suicidal at some point during our relationship, and had high sexual appetites. All of the women who loved to fuck also owned multiple cats; all the ones who didn't, or were lukewarm about it, owned one or none.
The one who had the most cats was the most sexually enthusiastic woman I've ever known. I met her through a mutual friend, and we were in bed by the end of our first date. She wanted to have sex twice a day, gave the best blowjobs I've ever had, loved anal sex (she could even have anal orgasms), had a history of bisexuality, and was seriously interested in threesomes.
She was also the craziest, with more issues than National Geographic: severe depression, OCD, and a tendency to become emotionally abusive when she didn't get her way. She called me more than once and basically said "I want to kill myself, please help", and that got old fast. And she was way, way too into her cats; it seemed like her life revolved around them.
Still, it wasn't easy to give her up (yes, I dumped her). In our time together, we fulfilled almost every sexual fantasy I've ever had. And her body was just amazing -- just the right amount of curves, and her vagina could grip me so tightly that I was almost afraid I wasn't going to get my cock back.
And if a parasite was responsible for that? Well, then, thank you, Mr. Parasite!
Veterinarians tend to have the highest suicide rate amongst health professionals. Correlation? Causation? Hmm...