Cats are host to a parasite that has been linked to mental illness and potentially suicide.
The background
Being a cat lady not only decreases your chances of meeting a suitable partner, but may also increase your chances of committing suicide, US researchers found.
Ok, not exactly – however much The Telegraph, with its mildly misleading headline, might want that to be true. Psychologists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the US conducted an expansive study of 45,000 women in Denmark, investigating the link between a parasite commonly found in cat faeces and mental illness. They found that women infected with the parasite more frequently attempted suicide later in life than women who were not.
Toxoplasmosis makes rats love cats
The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), produces an infection called toxoplasmosis. It has three normal hosts: Humans, cats and rodents. In rats and mice, it can alter behavior to such a weird degree that it can actually make the rodents attracted to the smell of cats, which then eat them and become the carriers themselves. Humans can become infected by changing their cats litter pans or gardening in areas where cats are wont to poop, then inadvertently ingesting the oocysts. About a third of the world’s population is infected with the parasite, which hides in cells in the muscles and brain, often without manifesting any symptoms. In recent years, however, toxoplasmosis has been linked to schizophrenia and other mental illness and now, suicide.
This may explain Liz “Fur Baby” Jones.
Will being a cat lady really make you try to kill yourself?
Maybe. The study’s senior author, Dr. Teodor Postolache, an associate professor of psychiatry, told The Telegraph, “We can’t say with certainty that T. gondii caused the women to try to kill themselves, but we did find a predictive association between the infection and suicide attempts later in life that warrants additional studies.”
