Jan 31, 2026 05:42 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 31, 2026 07:16 PM by C C.)
Not owning a cat doesn't really help, since you're inevitably going to be visiting households where the owners have an array of felines, and dining with the residents occasionally as a guest, part of a festive occasion, etc.
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A brain parasite infecting millions is far less sleepy than we thought
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-parasite-...we-thought
EXCERPTS: A parasite that lives permanently in the brains of millions may not be as uniformly dormant as scientists once thought. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) have recently found evidence of low-level T. gondii reactivation in the brains of mice, even during long-term infection.
Today, more than a third of the world's human population is infected by Toxoplasma gondii, a brain-invading parasite that reproduces in cats with mice and other animals acting as intermediate hosts.
Though the pathogen often ends up in a healthy human, following contact with cat feces or raw meat, infections typically cause no symptoms, meaning few are any the wiser. Unbeknownst to its host, the parasite creates cysts within the tissues of the human brain, heart, and muscle, where it can then reside for a lifetime – seemingly inactive until immune defenses falter.
But something seems to be going on inside these cysts. [...] In the brains of mice chronically infected (for 28 days) with T. gondii, Wilson and colleagues found that cysts contained a greater diversity of parasite subtypes than in the acute stage.
In the first week or so of infection, the parasites seemed to switch to a faster-growing stage, but afterward they shifted to a slower-growing phase and forms that maintained the cysts. A linear, stepwise form of maturation, the authors say, is unlikely, and that means our understanding of this parasitic infection needs updating.
"For decades, the Toxoplasma life cycle was understood in overly simplistic terms," says Wilson. "Our research challenges that model." The study was published in Nature Communications.... (MORE - details)
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A brain parasite infecting millions is far less sleepy than we thought
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-parasite-...we-thought
EXCERPTS: A parasite that lives permanently in the brains of millions may not be as uniformly dormant as scientists once thought. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) have recently found evidence of low-level T. gondii reactivation in the brains of mice, even during long-term infection.
Today, more than a third of the world's human population is infected by Toxoplasma gondii, a brain-invading parasite that reproduces in cats with mice and other animals acting as intermediate hosts.
Though the pathogen often ends up in a healthy human, following contact with cat feces or raw meat, infections typically cause no symptoms, meaning few are any the wiser. Unbeknownst to its host, the parasite creates cysts within the tissues of the human brain, heart, and muscle, where it can then reside for a lifetime – seemingly inactive until immune defenses falter.
But something seems to be going on inside these cysts. [...] In the brains of mice chronically infected (for 28 days) with T. gondii, Wilson and colleagues found that cysts contained a greater diversity of parasite subtypes than in the acute stage.
In the first week or so of infection, the parasites seemed to switch to a faster-growing stage, but afterward they shifted to a slower-growing phase and forms that maintained the cysts. A linear, stepwise form of maturation, the authors say, is unlikely, and that means our understanding of this parasitic infection needs updating.
"For decades, the Toxoplasma life cycle was understood in overly simplistic terms," says Wilson. "Our research challenges that model." The study was published in Nature Communications.... (MORE - details)