Slashdot Mirror
Mind-Altering Cat Parasite Linked To a Whole Lot of Neurological Disorders (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: The brain-dwelling parasite Toxoplasma gondii is estimated to be hosted by at least 2 billion people around the world, and new evidence suggests the lodger could be more dangerous than we think. While the protozoan invader poses the greatest risk to developing fetuses infected in the womb, new research suggests the parasite could alter and amplify a range of neurological disorders, including epilepsy, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's, and also cancer. "This study is a paradigm shifter," says one of the team, neuroscientist Dennis Steindler from Tufts University. "We now have to insert infectious disease into the equation of neurodegenerative diseases, epilepsy, and neural cancers." The findings are part of an emerging field of research looking into how T. gondii, which is usually transmitted to humans via contact with cat faeces (or by eating uncooked meat), produces proteins that alter and manipulate the brain chemistry of their infected hosts.
Thus explaining "crazy cat lady" syndrome.
"To be clear, the researchers aren't saying the brain parasite is definitively what's behind people developing these debilitating illnesses, but it's possible that T. gondii's protein-based meddling in the brain environment could possibly influence or enable pre-existing susceptibilities in some people to these kinds of diseases."
So, only possibly linked. But maybe not. Bad title.
If this is remotely true, we are well and truly fucked, because it isn't just cats, it's damn near everything.
On the serious side, cook yer gadamned food properly and wash your hands after doing shit like taking a crap, or petting pigs, and then all you'll have to worry about is everything else.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
more and more we're finding mental disorders and weaknesses aren't poor decision making or weak moral fiber but a sign something is broken. For millennia we've blamed the mentally ill for their faults unless they were so stark raving mad we couldn't do anything but laugh. As a lot of smaller behavioral problems are traced to physiology I wonder if our society and our political narratives will adapt.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, yes and no...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Still totally worth it.
must be my 6 cats that make me trip out all the time.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Ted Nugent? https://www.google.com/search?...
Usually mice are afraid of the scent of cats, and steer clear.
But toxoplasma gondii-infected mice lose their fear of cats, and are actually attracted to the scent. They'll seek it out and hang out close to cats, where they'e more likely to be eaten, thus transferring the toxoplasma to the cat, where it can continue its life cycle.
That has nothing to do with this article, but I think it's really cool.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
This is *really* cool science, but "paradigm shifting" may be a touch over the top--this isn't the first paper or study to come to the conclusion that Toxo plays a role in neurological disorders, and there are labs around the globe that have been working on this topic for years. (Full disclosure: my wife was a postdoc in a lab that studied Toxo and its role in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I'm no expert myself and will happily defer to real researchers on this, but I picked up a lot over the years from her.)
Fun Toxo tidbit: this is dredged from the depths of my memory, but as I recall that they've found a correlation between Toxo rates and automobile accident rates across several countries in Europe. The underlying theory is that Toxo causes very slight impairments in both risk assessment and motor control in its victims--not enough to really notice in an individual, but enough to track across a population...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Having been bitten and scratched by a species dedicated to annihilating songbirds has nothing to do with it.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
She had a platform. I think she stumbled off of it on several occasions.
Or just possibly they dont like the idea of breeding more of an animal that existing primarily to torture and kill the local wildlife in the area, mostly the local small bird population?
No, you are right, it must be insecurity.
Do you burn up ants with a magnifying glass in summer for fun? Pull the legs off insects? Its significantly less cruel to wildlife than keeping a cat.
Quite impressive really.
Being diagnosed with TP at least 2 years before the first confirmed cases showing TP was a human pathogen, and 11 years before a test was developed for it.
Luck you are so smart, Professor - you should publish!
I did some reading up on toxoplasmosis about a decade ago, when a friend's twenty-something son got mixed up with a crazy woman in her forties who was a classic "crazy cat lady" (except she was not old and she looked and acted like an oversexed teenager). Not much had been published in the medical journals at that time, and I doubt that much has been added since then.
There had been several studies on toxoplasmosis in rats. Some of the findings were that infected rats became greater risk-takers who would explore potentially hostile environments sooner, and more often, than healthy rats. They were attracted to cat urine, where healthy rats avoid that odor. They were more sexually active than uninfected rats.
There was conjecture at that time that "crazy cat ladies" did not experience the odor of cat piss the same way other people did, which is why they tolerated, and sometimes seem to prefer, to live in rooms that reeked of cat piss. There was conjecture that these women were promiscuous and as a group tended to have intense sexual relationships that did not last long. It seemed like as a group they had more automotive crashes than the norm, and that they were more frequently fired for abusing sick leave and other job perks, or fudging the paperwork. These are indicators of a greater degree of risk-taking.
Conclusions: In the specific case, the boy got dumped and the girl moved out of state, so that was resolved. My personal conclusion is to avoid any relationship with women who live with cat stink, or own more than two cats. I will not venture any more general conclusion.
It is a little scary that somewhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3 adults tests positive for exposure to T. gondii. However there is no way to determine whether any of these positives is an active carrier, or whether the parasite has gotten into their brain.
Now if I were going to write a zombie apocalypse story, I would probably use a mutant strain of T. gondii as the agent.... But I don't write that kind of story.
That's not a very nice thing to say about Mrs Cohn. And I don't think she got elected to anything, in any case.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Unemployment is down, GDP is up, stock market hitting highs.
Naw, the only people slitting their own throats are the piss bottlers who thought a self-shitting side o' beef that had no platform was the answer to everything.
And guess what, you're not getting jack shit of the GDP increase. You're getting fucked in the ass and too stupid to know it.
In 1945 in Berlin while Der Fuhrer was safe inside his bunker and the German industrialists that profited were quickly working behind the scenes to avoid having their money in Switzerland confiscated by getting friendly again with their American counterparts, the effects of Toxoplasma gondii had lessened to a very great extent. Thus came the German term Dachkaninchen used for the equivalent of what was derided originally by Hitlers press about the British during the years they stood alone against the Nazis.
It seems that even though the gdp of the US and Canada is up and the 1% is quickly becoming the .5% even as the numbers of homelessness and food price inflation is out of control, the facts are that there are still vast untaped food resources left in the US for the poor. As and example I give you the traveling homeless that come and go in our cities, a fair number of them travel with dogs. This is very smart because if you cannot get welfare then you have a handy piece of meat right there with you. Same with little old ladies who keep a pile of cats, when they can't afford to eat cat food as many seniors are forced to do then there is always the Dachkaninchen (roof rabbits) to fall back on if worst comes to worst. NOW THIS IS AN IGNORANT shit of a post!!!! At least according to my cats. MEOW
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
There was conjecture that these women were promiscuous and as a group tended to have intense sexual relationships that did not last long.
Ok, sold. How do we infect the hot chicks of the planet?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Or reading a certain sci-fi series where the far future is actually controlled by intelligent, sentient bacteria that will their unwitting host species to co-operate or go to war to further their distribution in the galaxy
Only when you finally get rid of the sponges currently sharing it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I talk about getting rid of political parasites, this wasn't exactly what I was talking about...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They were more sexually active than uninfected rats.
I guess that explains why nobody has bothered to find a cure for this disease that affects billions of people. Would they want the cure anyway?
Ok, sold. How do we infect the hot chicks of the planet?
So now, you finally understand how the internet can both at the same time be
- only for porn
- only for kitten
You're witnessing our Machiavellian ploy unfold.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Thus explaining "crazy cat lady" syndrome.
Yes, that's exactly what it explains. No joke.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
ntr
It's almost incurable to begin with and pretty much the only people getting any treatment for it are AIDS victims.
Interesting.
"One Cat Short of Crazy"
Have gnu, will travel.
Somebody is really attached to their pussy cat...
It doesn't work that way. You're thinking of parasites that tie their reproduction to the reproduction of the host. This is a parasite that ties its reproduction to the host being eaten by a cat. The evolutionary pressures are different.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's not a unreasonable question, and it might even have some application to this particular case, though it would certainly be an edge effect. Toxoplasmosis does seem to encourage risky behavior (of certain types) so it could affect political leanings. But curing it wouldn't reverse political leanings because those are largely habitual. That said, it has been demonstrated, e.g., that, statistically, Republicans are more sensitive to disgust than are Democrats. So there certainly are deep connections that could over time change things. Just *how* that would change things is unclear. And it's not as if toxoplasmosis is the only bacterial mind-control agent that inhabits people. They aren't all even parasites, unless you consider your gut bacteria parasites.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Sounds like you're describing classic symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder; and given my (unfortunate) familiarity with several sufferers (runs in my family) - they seem to share a common trait of hypersensitive smell.
So yes: they all seem to love cats. A lot. And prefer them to humans. (because: you get pure affection, with no complicated human emotional and relational politics). But cat pee? Not the ones I'm familiar with. They absolutely don't tolerate it, and take extra measures to stay on top of pet odors. (and all odors, really). (even odors that aren't really there).
Now: that there IS a "classic crazy cat-lady" syndrome, I won't deny. I just don't think it's common to these Borderline Personality Disorder people (who are also commonly very fond of cats). Maybe some BPD ppl get t. gondii infections and get both? That would be unfortunate because BPD is bad enough. Those people struggle to lead normal lives as it is.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I know nothing about PCOS ---I just now googled to find it is "Polycystic Ovary Syndrome". Since one of the women in my social circle comes down with every estrogen related polysyllabic disease with an abbreviation within a short time of its first appearance on the intarwebs she frequents, I will undoubtedly soon be made familiar with the litany of PCOS' signs and symptoms. If you don't know any women with this particular form of Munchhausen syndrome, I envy you.
But does PCOS lead to the inability to hold down a job for longer than the first annual performance review, where questions of whether the woman had completed any of the assigned tasks without fudging somewhere arise? A resume of more than 12 jobs in the last decade is probably not a part of whatever PCOS is, but is common among CCLs (Crazy Cat Ladies, abbreviation introduced here to keep pace with the PMAs ---Pseudo Medical Abbreviations--- that are being floated around). Does PCOS lead to the inability to get reasonable car insurance because of an excessive number of bizarre accidents ("I was sure that I could squeeze into that space")?
CCL from the toxo parasite is associated with these behaviors, as well as with the sexual promiscuity.
I remember reading somewhere that the highest concentration of human hosts of the parasite was France (due to their propensity to eating raw meat). That article noted a correlation between this and 'fiery temperament' and increased risk taking behaviour.
It turns out that President Trump has been infected with T.gondii for decades.
Also, so have a vast majority of citizens that voted for him.
Thus, answering some perplexing questions...
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.