Toxoplasmosis in Brazil

Brazil’s obsession with toxoplasmosis is difficult to explain. The term, “Toxoplasma” appears in 0.363% of all Brazilian publications indexed on PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed – as compared to 0.086% of publications from the United States. Abstracts from Gideon www.GideonOnline.com summarize 120 relevant surveys / serosurveys from Brazil, but only 19 from the combined literature of neighboring Bolivia, Argentina and Venezuela (only 38 from the United States). Strikingly, there have been only 37 Brazilian surveys of HIV infection, and only 9 of dengue as of 2013. The following list of Brazilian Toxoplasma surveys is abstracted from the Gideon e-book series [1,2]. (Primary references available on request) Prevalence surveys: 0.4% of solid organ transplant recipients (2001 to 2006) 3.8% of the general population and 5.8% of seropositive individuals in Barra Mansa, Rio de Janeiro State (ocular toxoplasmosis, 2009 publication) 19.8% of eye diseases treated at an ophthalmology clinic in Sao Paulo (2013 publication) 4.8% of HIV-positive patients in the southern region (history of neurotoxoplasmosis, 2009 to 2010) 10% of autopsied AIDS patients (cause of death, Amazonas, 1996 to 2003) 7.84% of slaughtered goats in Bahia (2009 publication) 11.6% of horses at slaughter (2013 publication) 34% and 66% of porcine diaphragm and tongue, respectively, in Southern Brazil. (2007 publication) 22.58% of soil samples ...
Source: GIDEON blog - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Ebooks Epidemiology ProMED Brazil Toxoplasmosis Source Type: blogs