Health
Published
Dec. 8, 2023, 5:57 p.m. ET
New medical analysis means that proudly owning a cat might double the chance of growing schizophrenia.
To attain that conclusion, scientists in Australia analyzed 17 research printed during the last 44 years from 11 totally different nations, together with the US and the UK.
“Our findings support an association between cat exposure and an increased risk of broadly defined schizophrenia-related disorders,” the authors wrote of their evaluation, published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.
“We found that individuals exposed to cats had approximately twice the odds of developing schizophrenia,” wrote the analysis workforce from the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research.
Schizophrenia is a fancy psychological sickness that always runs in households, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The sickness may cause troubling signs corresponding to listening to voices, having hassle considering clearly and referring to others. It sometimes begins all of the sudden in a person’s late teenagers or early maturity.
Symptoms of schizophrenia also can embrace:
Worldwide, the sickness is estimated to be present in one in every of each 300 folks, or about 24 million folks, according to the World Health Organization. Schizophrenia might be managed with drugs and supportive remedy, however there’s no identified treatment for it.
The concept that cat possession might be linked to schizophrenia threat isn’t new and was first proposed in a 1995 research. That report steered publicity to a parasite referred to as Toxoplasma gondii might be the trigger.
The parasite is believed to enter a person’s physique via a cat’s chunk or contact with a its bodily fluids or feces. It can be ingested via contaminated water or undercooked meat.
It’s estimated that about 40 million folks within the US could also be contaminated with T. gondii, normally with none signs. However, the parasite can infiltrate the central nervous system and affect neurotransmitters.
In earlier research, T. gondii had been linked to persona modifications, the emergence of psychotic signs and a few neurological problems, together with schizophrenia.
However, the researchers word {that a} hyperlink doesn’t definitively show that T. gondii triggered these modifications or that the parasite was handed from a cat to a human.
The parasite, nevertheless, has been confirmed to produce other critical results on human well being, particularly for pregnant girls, who can move the parasite via the placenta to the fetus, according to the Cleveland Clinic
T. gondii will increase the chance of miscarriage, stillbirth or critical well being issues for the kid, together with imaginative and prescient issues, blindness, developmental delays and studying variations.
The research authors famous that extra analysis is required earlier than anybody could make any closing interpretations.
“Our review provides support for an association between cat ownership and schizophrenia-related disorders,” the authors wrote.
“There is a need for more high-quality studies, based on large, representative samples to better understand cat ownership as a candidate risk-modifying factor for mental disorders.”
