Changes in the personality profile of young women with latent toxoplasmosis

Latent toxoplasmosis is the most widespread parasite infection in developed and developing countries. The prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection va ries mostly between 20 to 80% in different territories. This form of toxopl asmosis is generally considered to he asymptomatic. Recently published resu lts, however, suggest that the personality profiles of infected subjects di ffer from those of uninfected controls. These results, however, were obtain ed on non-standard populations (biologists or former acute toxoplasmosis pa tients). Here we studied the personality profiles of 191 young women tested fair anti-Toxoplasma immunity during gravidity. The results showed that th e differences between Toxoplasma-negative and Toxoplasma-positive subjects exits also in this sample of healthy women. The subjects with latent toxopl asmosis had higher intelligence, lower guilt proneness, and possibly also h igher ergic tension. The difference in several other factors (desurgency/su rgency, alaxia/protension, naivete/shrewdness, and self-sentiment integrati on) concerned changes in the variances, rather than the mean values of the factors.