Seroprevalence and risk factors of Toxoplasma gondii among pregnant women in Adwa district, northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background Toxoplasma gondii infection is a great health concern to pregnant women and the developing fetus. The aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of T. gondii and its associated factors in Adwa district. Methods A facility based cross-sectional study was conducted from January to June 2018 in Adwa district. Structured, a pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect the demographic and risk factor related data. Serum sample, collected from each of the study subjects was tested for IgG and IgM anti T.godii specific antibodies using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay. A bivariable and multivariable logistic regression model was applied to show association between the dependent and independent variables considering P < 0.05 and the 95% confidence interval. Result Out of the 360, 128 (35.6%) pregnant women were found to be positive for antibodies specific to T. gondii . Furthermore, 117 (32.5%) women were positive only for IgG, and 11 (3.1%) were positive both for IgM and IgG antibodies. Age, educational level, habit of hand washing after contact with garden soil or domestic animals, presence of domestic cat, history of contact with domestic dog and consumption of raw vegetables were significantly associated with T. gondii . Conclusion The seroprevalence of T. gondii among pregnant women in the study area is low compared to the other regions of Ethiopia, and within the range of the seroprevalences in the central and East Africa region. However, efforts should be done to create awareness on the potential risk factors of the parasite in the community.

WITHDRAWN: Sero-epidemiology of Toxoplasma gondii and risk factors among pregnant women in Africa

“…It is reported that the sexual multiplication of T. gondii takes place in cats and hence cats excrete the unsporulated oocysts with faeces in the environments [4,57]. Living or contact with cat were found to be the independent predictors of T. gondii infection (p<0.05) [11,21,23,27,29,34]. Whereas only one study did not find any association of living or contact with domestic animals such as cat and being infected with T. gondii among pregnant women [45].…”

“…In this review, other predictors of T. gondii seropositivity were the consumption of raw vegetables or fruits. A significant association was observed between T. gondii seropositivity and eating raw or unwashed vegetables or fruits [20,21,28,30,35,37,44].…”

“…The studies qualified for the review were conducted in 12 countries in Africa. Thirteen (36.1%) of these studies were from eastern Africa [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] [11]. The overall number of study participants included in this meta-analysis was 10,701 and 4,242 pregnant women for IgG and IgM respectively.…”

“…Reviewed studies concluded that there is the need of implanting a community education among pregnant women [11,21,22,[27][28][29][30]33,35,44,46,50]. Since there is no vaccine against T. gondii, prevention depends only on increasing the pregnant women's knowledge about toxoplasmosis, its origin, transmission and prevention.…”

Detection of human intestinal protozoan parasites in vegetables and fruits: a review

“…Among the three principal routes of toxoplasmosis transmission, consumption of unwashed vegetables and fruits contaminated with cat feces is an important one that sometimes may lead to food-borne outbreaks [57]. The significant association of T. gondii infections with the consumption of contaminated raw vegetables is also observed in previous studies [58][59][60]. The detection of Toxoplasma gondii in contaminated vegetables and fruits is usually performed by PCR amplification [23,[61][62][63].…”