Introduction: Immunity to Toxoplasma gondii infection is known to be a critical point for women during pregnancy. Non immune pregnant women may at risk to be infected with the parasite. The par-asite can be transmitted via placenta and causes adverse effects in fetus. The main objective of the present work was to study sero-epidemiology of Toxopla-sma infection in pregnant women refer-red to Al Zahra hospital in Tabriz.
Materials & Methods: Totally 300 blood samples were collected from 18-35 years pregnant women referred to Al-Zahra hospital in Tabriz during one year. The sera were tested for IgG and IgM titration with ELISA kits. In addition, demographic cha-racteristics of the women were obtained through appropriate questionnaires.
Findings: Positive IgG and IgM titers were identified in the sera of 26.33% and 0.33% of the pregnant women, res-pectively. The higher frequency of positive titers was associated with older age. In addition, 97.46% of the women with positive titer had a history of contact with cats.
Discussion & Conclusion: Regarding the prevalence rate of 73.33% in non-imm-une pregnant women in Tabriz, the preventive measurements in nutrition and contact with cats should be cons-idered by the women. We recommend the sera of the pregnant women should be monitored for Toxoplasma infection at least once a year, particularly during the first trimesters of pregnancy.
Dalimiasl A, Arshad M. Sero-epidemiology of Toxoplasma Infection in PregnantWomen Referred to Al Zahra Hospital in Tabriz. J. Ilam Uni. Med. Sci. 2012; 20 (3) :55-62 URL: http://sjimu.medilam.ac.ir/article-1-780-en.html