As interesting as this is, it's kind of got my spidy-sense tingling. How many non-significant outcomes did test and not publish before seeing traffic accidents? The perfect dose-dependence gives more credence (increasing odds ratio at increasing titers), although the sample size is small.
The paper states high up that it's been well studied that Toxoplasmosis infection increases reaction time - this study was basically just showing that that laboratory-viewed metric has real-world consequences.
As far as mechanism of action, T. gondii infects both neurons in the brain and glial cells.
Your reminder that if you own cats that don't go outdoors they are not a risk factor for toxoplasmosis. Only outdoor and stray cats get the parasite. Most cases of toxoplasmosis come from eating undercooked meat in any case.
Latent toxoplasmosis is literally insidious, hidden inside body fat cells where antibiotics won't reach and only occasionally it gets out to infect more cells. So one round is not enough, you have to take antibiotics for years until all the infected cells die.
It sounds a lot like the explanation for chronic Lyme disease (except with nerve tissue and not fat cells), which is apparently still quite controversial despite having lots of anecdotal evidence to support it.
Also if the parasite is hiding in your fat cells, does that also mean that you can't detect it in a blood test?
Hmm. I wonder if there is an antibiotic prodrug that would mimic glucose enough for it to be recognised by beta cells, get metabolised and release the antibiotic payload inside a fat cell.
Cat ownership doesn't even come up as a major sources of toxoplasmosis infection when studies are done. Wild cats can have it but the source of infection is the dirt they've used, which means house cats are unrelated and no risk.
"A total of 252 women with toxoplasmosis, along with 748 controls from Naples, Lausanne, Copenhagen, Oslo, Brussels, and Milan, were interviewed by telephone or in person. Overall, eating raw or undercooked beef, lamb, or other meats; contact with soil; and travel outside the country were major sources of infection."
Cats don't even make the list of major sources of infection. Further,
"The association of cats and human toxoplasmosis is difficult to assess by epidemiological surveys because soil, not the cats, is the main culprit. Oocysts are not found on cat fur and are often buried in soil along with cat faeces.11 Therefore, direct contact with cats is irrelevant with respect to T gondii transmission, and soil contact is universal and difficult to avoid."
What you mean by how unimpaired various BACs are? I would think there would be a fairly tight curve of BAC to reaction time for an individual.
Of course most of driving is so easy that I’m sure a huge percent of the time drunk driving has no consequences, but haven’t we all been in an occasional situation that requires fast reaction to narrowly avoid a crash?