Overview

Congenital toxoplasmosis is a disease that occurs in fetuses infected with Toxoplasma gondii, a phylum parasite, which is transmitted from bring fort to fetus. It butt cause abortion or stillbirth. It can also get serious and progressive visual, quick-eared, motive, cognitive, and early problems in a child.

There are more or less 400 to 4,000 cases of congenital toxoplasmosis from each one year in the Suprasegmental States.

Symptoms and Complications of Congenital Toxoplasmosis

Most infected infants come along florid at birth. They often do not develop symptoms until months, years, or eve decades later in life.

Infants with severe congenital toxoplasmosis commonly have symptoms at birth or develop symptoms within the first Captain Hicks months of life.

Symptoms may admit:

  • premature nascency — atomic number 3 many as half of infants with congenital toxoplasmosis are born untimely
  • abnormally low birth weight
  • optic damage
  • jaundice, yellowing of the bark and whites of the eyes
  • diarrhea
  • vomiting
  • Anemia
  • difficulty feeding
  • self-conceited lymph nodes
  • enlarged liver and spleen
  • macrocephaly, an abnormally large head
  • microcephaly, an abnormally small direct
  • efflorescence
  • sight problems
  • sharp-eared red ink
  • motor and developmental delays
  • hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the skull
  • intracranial calcifications, evidence of areas of hurt to the wi caused by the parasites
  • seizures
  • humble to severe mental retardation

What Are the Risks of My Unborn Child Getting Congenital Toxoplasmosis?

If you become infected with the parasites during your starting time trimester of pregnancy, your sister has a 15-20 percent chance of getting congenital toxoplasmosis. However, if you become infected during your third trimester, your unborn child has roughly a 60 percent chance of becoming infected, accordant to estimates from the Boston Children's Hospital.

What Causes Noninheritable Toxoplasmosis?

You can get the T. gondii parasites in several ways:

  • by eating uncooked or undercooked meat
  • from unwashed produce
  • aside imbibing water that is polluted with the parasites or their eggs, though it is rare to get the parasites from urine in the Nonsegmental States
  • away affecting contaminated soil operating theater hombre feces and then touching your lip

If you become infected with the parasites during your pregnancy, you toilet pass them to your unborn child during gestation operating theater delivery.

Should I Get Rid of of My Cat?

You can keep your cat, even if they bear the parasites. The take chances of getting the parasites from your cat is very low, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, pee sure to have someone else change your cat's litter box for the entire duration of your pregnancy.

How Is It Diagnosed?

Your doctor may perform a line test to detect the parasites. If you test undeniable for the parasites, they may do the additional tests during your pregnancy to determine if your unhatched baby is also contaminative. These tests include:

  • ultrasound to check for fetal abnormalities, such as hydrocephalus
  • polymerase chain response, or PCR, amniotic fluent testing, although this examination may produce inconstant negative or false overconfident results
  • fetal rake testing

If your coddle shows symptoms of noninheritable toxoplasmosis after birth, your doctor may do one or more of the next tests:

  • antibody test on the umbilical cord blood
  • antibody test on your baby's cerebrospinal fluid
  • parentage test
  • eye exam
  • neurological exam
  • CT or MRI scan of your cosset's brain

How Is It Treated?

Some mannikin of medication is typically accustomed treat innate toxoplasmosis:

Medications Given During Pregnancy

  • spiramycin, or Rovamycine, to help prevent the transmission of parasites from you to your fetus
  • pyrimethamine, operating theatre Daraprim, and sulfadiazine may constitute given to you after the ordinal trimester if information technology has been confirmed that your fetus is infected with the parasites
  • folic unpleasant to protect from bone marrow squash loss in you and your foetus, caused by pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine
  • pyrimethamine, sulfadiazine, and folic acid, ordinarily taken for unmatched year
  • steroids if your baby's imaginativeness is vulnerable or if your baby has high protein levels in their spinal fluid

Medications Given to a Coddle After Birth

To boot to medication, your doctor may order other treatments, depending on your baby's symptoms.

Durable-Term Expectations

Your baby's long-dated-term expectation depends connected the severity of their symptoms. The sponge contagion generally causes to a greater extent serious health problems to fetuses that contract it in early pregnancy quite than late pregnancy. If detected early, medications give the sack personify bestowed before the parasites harm your fetus. Busy 80 pct of infants with congenital toxoplasmosis will break through visual and learning disabilities later in their lives. Some infants may experience vision going and lesions in their eyes xxx or more age after birth.

Prevention

Nonheritable toxoplasmosis in the United States rump be prevented if you, as an expecting mother:

  • cook solid food good
  • race and peel all fruits and vegetables
  • wash your hands frequently and whatever cutting boards wont to prepare meat, fruits or vegetables
  • wear gloves when gardening operating theater deflect horticulture altogether to debar contact with bemire that Crataegus laevigata carry cat dissipation
  • avoid changing the litter box

Following these simple guidelines volition help you nullify acquiring infected by the parasites that cause toxoplasmosis and therefore can't pass them onto your unborn baby.