title: A possible relationship between Toxoplasma gondii and schizophrenia: A seroprevalence study.
abstract: Objective. Schizophrenia is a pervasive neuropsychiatric disease of uncertain etiology. We aimed to investigate a possible association between Toxoplasma gondii infection and schizophrenia in this study. Method. We selected individuals with schizophrenia (n=88) and tested them with commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for anti-Toxoplasma IgG and IgM antibodies and compared these seropositivity rate to those of controls without psychiatric disease (n=88). Results. The rate of IgG antibody in the schizophrenia patients (47.7%) was higher than the control groups (20.4%) (P<0.001). We did not find any anti-Toxoplasma IgM seropositivity in both schizophrenia patients and control group. In schizophrenic patients with and without anti-Toxoplasma IgG groups statistical analysis did not reveal any correlation between demographic variables and Toxoplasma infection. Conclusion. Our findings supported previous studies indicate that T.gondii may play a role in etiopathogenesis in some cases of schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology.
authors.forename: Funda
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Dogruman-Al
authors.forename: Selcuk
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Aslan
authors.forename: Safak
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yalcin
authors.forename: Semra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kustimur
authors.forename: Songul
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Turk
keywords: Schizophrenia; Toxoplasma gondii; anti-Toxoplasma IgG; anti-Toxoplasma IgM