Routine prenatal Toxoplasma screening urged in US

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Because pregnant women who contract toxoplasmosis can pass the parasite on their unborn babies, with serious consequences, they should be checked routinely for the condition, a US study finds.

Infection with Toxoplasma gondii, a common protozoan organism, is widespread. People can pick it up quite easily, especially when cats are around because the animals frequently harbor the parasite.

A woman who has had the infection and has become immune cannot pass the organism on to her baby during pregnancy, but that’s not the case when she picks up the bug for the first time while she is pregnant. In this situation there’s a good chance the baby will become infected, possibly resulting in serious brain damage.

If the infection is spotted, pregnant women can be treated with antiparasitic drugs to lower the risk to their babies.

According to the current study, in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, many women who have an infant that is affected by congenital Toxoplasma infection are unaware that they have been exposed to potential source of the parasite. Moreover, the investigators found that only about half of the cases would have been detected by a regular patient examination, suggesting that routine prenatal screening for toxoplasmosis should be the rule.

“We found that approximately half of mothers with infants who have congenital toxoplasmosis could identify a possible risk factor that may have led to their infection during pregnancy, and thus transmission to their fetus, or an illness compatible with acute acquired toxoplasmosis,” Dr. Rima McLeod told Reuters Health.

Examples of risk factors, she said “include consuming meat that is not cooked to well done or exposure to cat excrement when gardening without gloves. An example of illness compatible with acute toxoplasmosis is enlarged lymph nodes with a fever.”

McLeod, at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and colleagues studied mothers of 131 infants with Toxoplasma infection. Only 10 women (8 percent) had had blood tests for toxoplasmosis before delivery.

“This is a preventable and treatable cause of brain and eye damage,” McLeod continued. “In France, education, systematic (blood testing), and diagnosis and treatment of the infected fetus and newborn infant is the approach to this infection, and outcomes are better than in the US.”

She concluded, “Our study findings indicate that this approach will be needed in the US to improve outcomes for this infection.”

SOURCE: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, February 2005.

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