Common cat-borne parasite is positively associated with frailty in older adults
medicalxpress.com
medicalxpress.com
> Higher serointensity could reflect a more virulent or widespread infection, multiple infections or recent reactivation of a latent infection, the authors said.
So... what I am getting from this is, "Generally speaking, there is a possible connection between adults who have had major or repeat infections and frailty in old-age," with zero indication of correlation between Toxoplasma gondii infections in particular and frailty.
Garbage and misleading headline, the article literally states "The researchers did not, as they originally hypothesized, find an association between any infection to T. gondii and frailty."
Sounds to me like it is a correlation to T. Gondii, via the antibodies. Perhaps that suggests it's an immune response that is contributing to frailty, not infections directly?
fundamentally disagrees with the headline of this submission. All we can say is that there might be a link between serointensity and frailty. It is entirely plausible that the link has nothing to do with T. gondii in particular, and that it's simply a correlation between general infection and frailty. But that doesn't make for a good clickbait headline.
> But they did find that, among those infected, those with higher "serointensity" or a higher concentration of antibodies to the parasite, were significantly more likely to be frail.
which should be read as
> But they did find that, among those infected, those with higher "serointensity" (i.e., a higher concentration of antibodies to the parasite), were significantly more likely to be frail.
When they say serointensity, they specifically mean "Toxoplasma gondii IgG Serointensity" [1].
Serointensity is how strongly your immune system responds to the infection. Which is different from whether you get the infection or not (their original hypothesis).
Also, statement after the above quote is '"This paper is important because it provides, for the first time, evidence of the existence of a link between frailty in older adults and intensity of the response to T. gondii infection," said co-author Blanca Laffon [...]'.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/advance-article/d...
> When they say serointensity, they specifically mean "Toxoplasma gondii IgG Serointensity"
Yes, because that's what they studied. :)
That doesn't mean we can draw such sharp conclusions. Next steps include compiling enough data for a meta-analysis on the variance in correlation between frailty and the serointensity of different pathogens.
https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtrea... talks about how the parasites can remain dormant in cysts, and reactivate in the immunosuppressed. (Which is interesting, as perhaps the elderly are immunosuppressed enough to allow reactivation?)
Also, from the article: "The researchers did not, as they originally hypothesized, find an association between any infection to T. gondii and frailty. But they did find that, among those infected, those with higher "serointensity" or a higher concentration of antibodies to the parasite, were significantly more likely to be frail."
Definitely, unless you go out in the wild to clean up cat poops