In France, where Vittecoq works at both a CNRS national research lab in Montpellier and the Tour du Valat research center in Arles, nearly one-third to about one-half of adults carry hitchhiking T. The parasite has wormed its way into an estimated one-third of people on the planet. She doesn’t see it as an extra-ordinary intrusion. She studies the ecology of parasites, especially the one-celled Toxoplasma gondii, which coincidentally is the creature that has invaded her brain. Not once in the course of a phone conversation and many e-mails did Vittecoq recommend wearing tinfoil hats or mention mind control by the CIA, the United Nations or little green men beaming rays from the moons of Uranus. Feliciano Sheep and pig: Pinare/Shutterstock gondii and human health, the parasites can end up in a person, who acquires the infection via contaminated meat, unclean produce or poor litter box technique. When they make their way into cat prey, the parasites may quickly return to a cat. Infected cats excrete parasites as oocysts, which can infect just about any warm-blooded vertebrate. gondii because only felines facilitate parasite sex. TOXIC CYCLE Cats are special hosts for T. Ongoing work suggests that the parasite makes the typically fear-inducing scent appealing. gondii–infected rats spent more time around cat urine (but not other urine) than noninfected rats. DPDx, Laboratory Identification of Parasites of Public Health Concern/CDC
Dubey, CDCīefore retreating into cysts, the parasites exist in a banana-shaped form (shown). gondii parasites hunkered down in a brain cyst (shown in a mouse) can keep an infection alive. Yet she doesn’t sound particularly upset. Her inner companions may be just hanging out - or they may be subtly changing her personality, manipulating her behavior or altering her risk of disease.
But Marion Vittecoq knows she has been invaded. Imagining tiny creatures infiltrating human brains is creepy enough.