Toxoplasmosis is a risk factor for acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection and a severe course of COVID-19 in the Czech and Slovak population: a preregistered exploratory internet cross-sectional study
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Background
Latent toxoplasmosis, i.e. a lifelong infection with the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii , affects about a third of the human population worldwide. In the past 10 years, numerous studies have shown that infected individuals have a significantly higher incidence of mental and physical health problems and are more prone to exhibiting the adverse effects of various diseases.
Methods
A cross-sectional internet study was performed on a population of 4499 (786 Toxoplasma -infected) participants and looked for factors which positively or negatively affect the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and likelihood of a severe course of COVID-19.
Results
Logistic regression and partial Kendall correlation controlling for sex, age, and size of the place of residence showed that latent toxoplasmosis had the strongest effect on the risk of infection (OR = 1.50) before sport (OR = 1.30) and borreliosis (1.27). It also had the strongest effect on the risk of severe course of infection ( Tau = 0.146), before autoimmunity, immunodeficiency, male sex, keeping a cat, being overweight, borreliosis, higher age, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Toxoplasmosis augmented the adverse effects of other risk factors but was not the proximal cause of the effect of cat-keeping on higher likelihood of COVID infection and higher severity of the course of infection because the effect of cat-keeping was also observed (and in particular) in a subset of Toxoplasma -infected respondents ( Tau = 0.153). Effects of keeping a cat were detected only in respondents from multi-member families, suggesting that a cat could be a vector for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within a family.
Conclusions
Toxoplasmosis is currently not considered a risk factor for COVID-19, and Toxoplasma -infected individuals are neither informed about their higher risk nor prioritised in vaccination programs. Because toxoplasmosis affects a large segment of the human population, its impact on COVID-19-associated effects on public health could be considerable.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.15.21257257: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Consent: The invitation as well as the informed consent on the first page of the questionnaire contained only most general information about the aims of the study and contents of the questionnaire.
IRB: Data collection was performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations and the project, including the method of obtaining from all participants informed consent with participation in this anonymous study, was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Science, Charles University (Komise pro práci s lidmi a lidským materiálem Přírodovědecké Fakulty Univerzity Karlovy) — No. 2020/25.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding no… SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.15.21257257: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Consent: The invitation as well as the informed consent on the first page of the questionnaire contained only most general information about the aims of the study and contents of the questionnaire.
IRB: Data collection was performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations and the project, including the method of obtaining from all participants informed consent with participation in this anonymous study, was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Science, Charles University (Komise pro práci s lidmi a lidským materiálem Přírodovědecké Fakulty Univerzity Karlovy) — No. 2020/25.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources For the purpose of the current study, answers 1 and 5 were coded as 0 (uninfected with Covid), answer 2 as 1 (Covid patients), and answers 3 and 4 were coded as NA (data not available). Covidsuggested: (CovidNLP, RRID:SCR_018513)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations and strengths of the study: The main limitation of the present study is that the participants were self-selected and probably do not represent a typical Czech population. Many were recruited via the Facebook site of the main investigator. They are therefore mostly people interested in biological sciences, evolutionary psychology, and quite possibly also cats as pets. On the other hand, they also invited their Facebook friends to participate in the study by pressing the share or like buttons at the end of the questionnaire. Our previous results had shown that the composition of participants of similar internet studies was highly similar, if not identical, to representative internet population with respect to the prevalence of 24 neuropsychiatric disorders43 or religiosity.44 It is important to emphasise that the informed consent form, as well as the text used for recruitment of participants, mentioned only ‘factors that might influence the risk of infection and the course of Covid disease’, that is, it made no reference to toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis status was self-reported by respondents, which may be viewed as a drawback. On the other hand, it has previously been demonstrated that information on toxoplasmosis status provided by 3,827 participants of another internet study nearly perfectly (99·5%) corresponded to information in our files on subjects tested for toxoplasmosis in our lab.45 Still, about 60% of male and 70% of female respondents recruited via the Fa...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
