Detection of Anti Toxoplasma antibodies in children with autism in Shebin Al-Kom district Menoufia Governorate, Egypt

Abstract

Background; Autism spectrum disorders (ASD), are a range of mental disorders of neurodevelopmental type. More than three billion human hosts are estimated to be affected by the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which is intracellular pathogen with a particular preference for the central nervous system (CNS). Accumulating evidence suggests that latent chronic toxoplasmosis contributes to triggering and progression of many neurological and psychiatric disorders, however the link and prevalence in ASD is not clear. Objective; The present study aimed to detect the relationship between Toxoplasma gondii infection in children suffering from autism disorder. Method: A case-controlled study was conducted on 80 children (40 cases and 40 controls), aged from 4-10 years. They were tested for the presence of anti-T. gondii. antibodies by ELISA. Analysis of data was performed using the Chi-square test and Fisher's exact test. Results; No significant differences were detected between healthy (5.0%) and diseased children regarding presence of anti-toxoplasmosis antibodies (17.5%). However a significant difference was observed between boys and girls concerning age and seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis, the percent of autistic boys with toxoplasmosis was 9.1%, while the infection was represented in 57.1% of girls with autism. History of acquiring infection with toxoplasmosis during pregnancy was positive in 27.5% of diseased children compared to control children where the percent was 12.5%, with no statistically significant result. Considering residence, there were no significant differences in the seroprevalence of T. gondii IgG among urban and rural regions (P-value =1.0). Conclusion: From our study, we concluded that despite the absence of significant difference between healthy and diseased children in regard to toxoplasmosis, autistic children were highly risky for catching toxoplasmosis infection which need more research in this era.

Toxoplasmosis and cytomegalovirus infection and their role in Egyptian autistic children

“…In the present study, the incidence of toxoplasmosis among autistic children was 24.4% (11 participants) when compared to 22.2% (10 participants) in the control children, and the difference was not statistically significant. This finding is consistent with previous reports of a non-significant correlation between autism and Toxoplasma infection in Iran (Afsharpaiman et al 2014 ), Turkey (Esnafoglu et al 2017 ), and Egypt (Gouda and Shafey 2020 ). In contrast, other research demonstrated a significant relationship between autism and Toxoplasma infection in Egypt (Prandota et al 2015 ), Saudi Arabia (AL Malki et al 2021 ), and Iraq (Bazzaz and Jameel 2022 ), which was also supported by a meta-analysis reported from different countries (Nayeri et al 2020 ).…”

“…However, there was a higher significant Toxoplasma seropositivity in boys than in girls in both the autistic and control groups, which was similar to sex distribution in past studies (Prandota et al 2015 ; Esnafoglu et al 2017 ). However, Gouda and Shafey ( 2020 ) have reported that autistic girls were more affected by Toxoplasma than boys, which can be explained by several reasons. For instance, according to Kang et al ( 2004 ), the immune response differs across gender in adolescents.…”