Crazy 'cat lady' parasite that decapitates sperm, affects 1 in 3, is grossly neglected: Study



Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that can infect any nucleated cell in any warm-blooded animal and can cause a wide range of health complications — some fatal, such as miscarriage or inflammation of the brain.

This singled-celled parasite, which can survive up to a lifetime in a human body, is stereotypically associated with crazy "cat ladies" due to its presence in cat feces — cats are its only known definitive hosts — and its association with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suicidal behavior.

'Toxoplasmosis is just getting left behind.'

Despite its association with "cat ladies," the parasite is an equal opportunity invader. A study published last year noted, for instance, that the rapidly dividing asexual form of the indiscriminate parasite can "colonize and proliferate" within testes, decapitate sperm, and cause "oxidative stress leading to male infertility."

A study published on Thursday in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases warned that toxoplasmosis, the virus caused by the parasite, is not receiving sufficient attention from the scientific powers that be — certainly not the level that might otherwise be warranted by its impact and pervasiveness.

"Toxoplasmosis continues to be one of the most common parasitic infectious diseases affecting humans, and the leading intraocular infection worldwide," said the study.

Toxoplasmosis chronically affects nearly one-third of the human population and is present in every country around the globe. South America is home to the highest rates of infection, with some regions reporting up to 80% of their adult populations afflicted. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 40 million people are infected with the parasite in the United States.

RELATED: Foreign 'Fauci acolyte' and his African crony charged with smuggling monkeypox onto American soil

Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

"Yet, the condition receives limited attention on health agendas," continued the researchers.

In a comparison of data provided by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers found that "toxoplasmosis research was funded at a level of $177 per disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) for the period 2018–2024, compared with research on trachoma and Chagas disease, at $283/DALY and $337/DALY, respectively."

"Key gaps persist across basic science, diagnostics, therapeutics, prevention, and implementation research," said the study. "No licensed human vaccine exists. Serological testing is widely available, but expensive for low-income scenarios and poorly standardized, complicating surveillance and estimation of the burden of disease. Treatment protocols lack robust comparative evidence, particularly for congenital and ocular toxoplasmosis. Environmental monitoring of oocysts remains technically demanding and absent from national programs."

"What we're seeing is that while there are these improvements occurring in the fight against other neglected tropical diseases, toxoplasmosis is just getting left behind," senior author on the paper Justine Smith, an ophthalmologist at Flinders University, told Gizmodo.

The researchers criticized the prevailing notion that the infection is "a zoonosis that is an unavoidable consequence of everyday human-animal interactions," stating that "accumulated evidence indicates otherwise: toxoplasmosis has well-characterized pathways of transmission and is preventable and controllable."

In hopes of addressing the "research deficit" and challenging the parasite status quo, the researchers proposed that the World Health Organization — which the U.S. officially withdrew from in January — officially designate toxoplasmosis as a "neglected tropical disease."

According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NTDs are called "'neglected' because they generally afflict the world's poor and historically have not received as much attention as other diseases. NTDs tend to thrive in developing regions of the world, where water quality, sanitation, and access to health care are substandard. However, some of these diseases also are found in areas of the United States with high rates of poverty."

An official NTD designation would prompt the WHO to mobilize global resources to tackle the parasite and unlock new funding streams for prevention and control measures, research, food safety measures, and environmental surveillance tools. The researchers noted further that an official designation "would facilitate technical guidance for Ministries of Health, helping Member States integrate toxoplasmosis into mother-child health programs, food safety systems, and primary-care protocols."

"That sort of recognition translates through to researchers being funded to work on things like vaccines, diagnostics, and curative drugs," Smith told Gizmodo. "There is no commercially available vaccine against toxoplasmosis. And the drugs we give patients can limit a flare-up of the disease, but there is no drug that cures it at this point."

While bullish on the WHO designating toxoplasmosis as an NTD, the researchers conceded that doing so "could strain resources that are already limited and dilute the efforts underway in existing programs for other NTDs."

Infection with toxoplasma gondii can result from foodborne transmission, animal-to-human transmission, mother-to-child transmission, and blood transfusions.

The CDC says that to reduce risk of infection, Americans should:

  • freeze meat for several days before cooking;
  • use a food thermometer to cook food to a safe internal temperature high enough to kill the parasite;
  • avoid consuming unpasteurized goat milk, raw oysters, mussels, or clams;
  • cook or rinse fruits and vegetables under water before eating;
  • wear gloves when gardening or touching soil that may be contaminated with cat excrement;
  • wash hands with soap any time that they might be contaminated with cat feces; and
  • change their cat's litter box daily.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Crazy 'cat lady' parasite decapitates sperm, 'colonizes' testes



Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that can infect any nucleated cell in any warm-blooded animal and can cause a wide range of health complications — some fatal, such as miscarriage or inflammation of the brain. Over 40 million Americans are infected with the parasite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it infects an estimated 30%-50% of the total world population.

This parasite is stereotypically associated with crazy "cat ladies" on account of the parasite's presence in cat feces — cats are its only known definitive hosts — and its association with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and suicidal behavior.

Researchers from Chile, Germany, and Uruguay confirmed in a new peer-reviewed study published in the FEBS Journal that the rapidly dividing asexual form of Toxoplasma gondii, generally known as tachyzoites, "colonize and proliferate" within testes and in the coiled sperm-storing tube behind each testicle.

RELATED: Lancet study: Fertility is plummeting globally, with over half of countries below replacement level

Toxoplasmosis from AIDS-infected patient. Photo By BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images

Besides its capacity to behead and deform sperm, the researchers indicated that the parasite's alterations to "mitochondrial activity can cause oxidative stress leading to male infertility."

Bill Sullivan, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Indiana University, recently noted that "testicular function and sperm production are sharply diminished in Toxoplasma-infected mice, rats, and rams. Infected mice have significantly lower sperm counts and a higher proportion of abnormally shaped sperm."

While the researchers indicated in the new study that the parasite's impact on sperm could be a factor contributing to the global declines in male fertility in recent decades, Sullivan suggested that "studies to date that show defects in the sperm of infected men are too small to draw firm conclusions at this time."

The CDC indicated that infections can occur as the result of eating contaminated under-cooked meat or shellfish or unwashed contaminated produce; contact with cat excrement; mother-to-child transmission; and receipt of an infected organ transplant or blood transfusion.

The agency recommended a number of precautions that might reduce the risk of infection, including wearing gloves when gardening or touching sand possibly contaminated with the parasite; ensuring food is cooked to a safe internal temperature; keeping meat frozen at sub-zero temperatures for several days before cooking; ensuring vegetables are properly rinsed before cooking and/or consumption; and, in the case of cat owners, changing litter boxes daily.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Bizarre fungus hijacks cicadas, transforming them into killer nymphomaniacs



The fungal parasite Massospora cicadina not only cohabits and transmogrifies the bodies of its hosts, but bends their will to its purposes, spreading death, destruction, and spores along the way.

While this might sound like some sort of a demonic possession, scientists have characterized the process by which such Entomophthoralean fungi — an order of fungi that takes its name from the ancient Greek words for "insect" and "destruction" — subvert host structures and behaviors for their own aims as the modification of host phenotypes.

Whereas Entomophthoralean fungi largely kill their hosts in order to disseminate its spores, Massospora cicadina keeps its host alive.

There are two types of Massospora cicadina infections. Cicadas with stage one infections produce spores capable of infecting other adult cicadas. Cicadas with stage two infections lay fungal traps for the next generation of cicadas that will emerge from the soil some 13 or 17 years later.

Up to 10% of both a 13-year brood and a 17-year brood will face the possibility of becoming "zombie insects" this year. The University of Connecticut's Biodiversity Research Collections Periodical Cicada Information website indicated that for the first time since 2015, a 13-year brood will emerge in the same year as a 17-year brood.

A study published in the peer-reviewed Nature journal Scientific Reports noted that infections cause "distention and loss of the terminal abdominal segments, genitalia included, in both sexes; the breached abdomen exposes infective spores and allows their dispersal."

One of the study's authors, Dr. John Cooley, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, Hartford, recently told CNN that when it comes to this fungal parasite, "the truth is actually much stranger than science fiction."

After an infected cicada's genitals and rear fall off, a white fungal plug bulges out in their place.

Matt Kasson, an associate professor of mycology and forest pathology at West Virginia University, told CNN, "It looks like there's a gumdrop that's been dropped in chalk dust, glued to the backside of these cicadas."

Some scientists have observed cicadas with stage one infections flying less often and opting instead to drag around their spore-laden abdomens, spreading spores and looking for potential victims. Cicadas with stage two infections apparently spend more time flying around, bombing spores from their corrupted abdomens.

Both sexes with stage one infections apparently become hypersexual in an effort to serve the parasite's purposes.

'So when they pull apart, guess what happens? Rip.'

Infected males try to maximize the victim coverage, exhibiting the wing-flick signaling-behavior "normally seen only in sexually receptive female cicadas" in an effort to trick other males into thinking they are females keen on copulating. By the time male victims realize their mate is not as advertised, it's often too late as the spores spread easily in close proximity.

Female cicadas are apparently incapable of identifying and avoiding infected males, so they too are at risk.

Cooley's study noted that "Massospora functions at least partly as a sexually transmitted disease and the novel behaviors of infected males are complex manipulations instigated by the fungus for its own benefit."

Deception is not the only way the infection is spread.

"Periodical cicadas have interlocking genitalia. So when they pull apart, guess what happens? Rip. And then there's a cicada walking around with someone else's genitals stuck to them," said Cooley. "And now the cicada that's infected is busted open."

Once "busted open," infected cicadas become what Kasson and others refer to as "saltshakers of death."

They fly around, flaking brown spores that threaten to infect the next brood.

Kasson and other scientists determined that infected cicadas are likely able to keep moving and mating despite their injuries because the fungus produces psychoactive compounds during infection. The first is a type of amphetamine, cathinone. The second is psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, in infected cicadas.

Cooley has, however, expressed uncertainty whether such drugs would affect the bugs in a similar manner as they do vertebrates.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

RFK Jr. said doctor thought spot in scans involved 'a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died': NYT



Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suffered memory loss and brain fog in 2010, according to the New York Times, which reported that Kennedy said in a 2012 deposition that doctors had seen a dark spot in brain scans and thought there was a tumor. But another doctor thought the area viewed in the scans "was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died," Kennedy claimed in the deposition, according to the outlet.

During an interview with the Times, Kennedy indicated that he had recovered from the memory loss and mental fog and does not suffer aftereffects from the parasite, which did not necessitate treatment.

"I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate."

Doctors thought that a cyst viewed in scans contained parasite remains, according to the Times, which noted that Kennedy indicated he was not aware of the kind of parasite.

The outlet also reported that Kennedy indicated that he found out about the parasite around the same point that he got diagnosed with mercury poisoning.

"I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate," the independent presidential candidate quipped in a post on X. "I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap," he added in another post.

— (@)

GOP Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia was scolded by some on social media for a post that read, "You either die a Kennedy with a hole in the brain or live long enough to become a Kennedy with a hole in the brain."

Kennedy's father and uncle, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy, respectively, were both assassinated in the 1960s.

"You think this is funny? Or clever? It's disgusting and says a lot about your character," Janice Dean tweeted in response to the congressman's post.

"This is... not okay. How did we get here?" Alex Berenson wrote.

— (@)

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

FACT CHECK: Does This Photo Show A Human Heart After Eating Pork?

'Beware of fake news'

FACT CHECK: Viral Image Claims This Parasite Is In COVID-19 Vaccines

'Completely false'