Applied Medical Informatics (Dec 2008)
Toxoplasmic Infection in Pregnant Women from Cluj County and Neighbouring Area
Abstract
Toxoplasmosis is an antropozoonosis very frequent in population as a benign usually asymptomatic disease. The problems are raised by the congenital form of this disease that may occur if the women acquire the parasite during pregnancy leading to congenital toxoplasmosis. In order to prevent congenital toxoplasmosis many countries have screening programs design to diagnose the acute infection during fertile age of female population. Our prospective serologic study over a selected group of 510 pregnant women in Cluj county area showed a 39 % prevalence of toxoplasmic infection among women of fertile age, with a predominance of acute toxoplasmic infection during first trimester of pregnancy (66.66%), representing the predominant cause of abortion in our study group. Annual infection risk for female population aged 20-33 years old is K = 0.67% in our geographic area. A 4 % of cases had IgM persistence for more than 1-year period, and another 7% demonstrate positive IgM along with positive IgG raising the possibility of persistency to 11% of cases. We find out that half of women address laboratory by their own initiative and we calculate that medium age of pregnant women with toxoplasmic immunity (positive IgG) was 28 years old.
