Toxoplasma Gondii: How your cat could be making you ‘crazy’

It’s long been known that a microbe found in cat's can harm people with weakened immune systems, such as people with AIDS.

It’s also been known that pregnant women should avoid cat litter so they don’t catch the microbe, lest they pass it on to their babies, causing brain damage in the infants or even death.

The microbe in question is Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short).

New research from an unconventional scientist is showing that in certain circumstances, the microbe can alter our basic personalities, making us more or less outgoing, trusting and fearful, and even making us more prone to schizophrenia, car crashes and suicides.

The circumstances that create this possibility are as follows;

• We have to be infected by the microbe
• Our bodies will eventually overcome it, 
• But the parasite can lay dormant,
• and the danger lies in whether it lodges or travels to our brain cells

The researcher, the Czech evolutionary biologist Jaroslav Flegr, claims that when you consider all its impacts, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”

Read more of this article here: How your cat could be making you ‘crazy’

Major breakthrough in preventing premature birth

A groundbreaking clinical study of a new method for preventing premature birth in millions of women each year, published in the medical journal Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology, shows that the rate of early pre-term delivery in women (<33 weeks) can be reduced by 45%, simply by treating pregnant women at risk with a low-cost gel of natural progesterone during the mid-trimester of pregnancy until term.

The peer-reviewed findings were led by the Perinatology Research Branch of the National Institutes of Health, housed by the Wayne State University School of Medicine at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit. The findings are certain to have substantial impact on the practice of medicine, according to the principal investigator of the three-year clinical trial.

The study is entitled Vaginal progesterone reduces the rate of pre-term birth in women with a sonographic short cervix: a multicenter, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. “The study published today offers hope to women, families and children,” said Dr. Roberto Romero, Chief of the Perinatology Research Branch of the NIH.

“Worldwide, more than 12 million premature babies (500,000 of them in the US) are born each year, and the results are often tragic. Our clinical study clearly shows that it is possible to identify women at risk and reduce the rate of pre-term delivery by nearly half, simply by treating women who have a short cervix with a natural hormone – progesterone.” Dr. Romero, principal investigator of the study, and Sonia S. Hassan, M.D., the lead author of the study.

Sonia S. Hassan is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the WSU School of Medicine. He also pointed out that numerous studies (many by the PRB) over the past decade have shown that ultrasound of the uterine cervix can identify pregnant women who are at high risk for pre-term delivery.

The ultrasound examination is simple to perform, painless, and can be performed between the 19th and 24th weeks of pregnancy. Pregnant women with a short cervix (one that is < 20mm) are at very high risk for preterm delivery.

Dr. Romero added that, once a high-risk mother for pre-term delivery has been identified, she can be offered treatment with progesterone. Of major interest is that progesterone reduced the risk of preterm delivery not only at <33 weeks, but also at <28 weeks (one of the secondary endpoints of the study).

It also reduced the rate of infant respiratory distress syndrome, the most common complication of premature babies. “We believe that the data in our study speaks for itself – and we predict that it will have major implications for obstetrics.”
 
Read more here

ESA Herschel Images: Vulpecula Constellation

This image, in the constellation of Vulpecula, shows an entire assembly line of newborn stars.

The diffuse glow reveals the widespread cold reservoir of raw material that our Galaxy has in stock for building stars.

Large-scale turbulence from the giant colliding Galactic flows causes this material to condense into the web of filaments that we see all over the image.

These are the ‘pregnant’ entities where the material becomes colder and denser. At this point, gravitational forces take over and fragment these filaments into chains of stellar embryos that can finally collapse to form baby stars.

Credits: ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium