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Toxoplasmosis

What are the symptoms?

In healthy adults and children infection may be without symptoms, a mild flu-like illness and occasionally symptoms similar to glandular fever. The infection can cause serious health problems for anyone with suppressed or damaged immunity, for example people on immune suppressing drugs or people with AIDS.

Toxoplasmosis is one of a small group of infections which can transmit to the fetus if caught for the first time during pregnancy. The risk of transmission and the degree of damage done depend on when in pregnancy the woman catches the infection. In the first trimester, the damage may be very severe as the fetus is so vulnerable, however it is less likely that infection is transmitted at this stage of pregnancy. Later on in pregnancy the damage is less severe, but the infection is more likely to transmit and cause congenital infection.

Severe damage includes excess fluid on the brain (see entry, Hydrocephalus), calcifications of the brain tissue that can lead to developmental delay (see entry, [Global developmental delay][1]) and [epilepsy][2], and damage to the retina of one or both eyes called retinochoroiditis. The majority of people with congenital toxoplasmosis have impaired sight in one or both eyes (see entry, [Vision disorders in Childhood][3]). The more severe damage to the brain is rare.

Damage in a severely affected infant will be apparent soon after birth, but in most cases the congenital infection will only show in childhood, the teens or even later, and this will be as retinochoroiditis.

View Background Background  |  How is it diagnosed? View How is it diagnosed?

Medical text written May 1996 by Contact a Family. Approved May 1996 by Dr T Brand, Toxoplasmosis Trust, London UK. Last updated February 2004 by Dr D Ho-Yen, Director, Scottish Toxoplasma Reference Laboratory, Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, UK.

 

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