Toxoplasma gondii, frailty and suicidal behaviour
Another area we have contributed recently to Toxoplasma research is frailty in the elderly, recently linked to suicidal behaviour (Kuffel et al. 2023). We have recently reported the first association between T. gondii serointensity in seropositives and geriatric frailty (Mohyuddin et al. 2024), resisting adjustment for depression and cognitive deficits. This is particularly relevant because sarcopenia is often featured in frailty, yet the negative effects of the muscular invasion by T. gondii have received so far, only cursory interest (Jin et al. 2017). There were no prior arti- cles on T. gondii and frailty, although there were several on chronic neurotropic viruses. There is a price to pay for every “first of its kind” excitement as it is often much hard- er to publish. It took us 11 submissions of this frailty article to be able to pass the editorial review. The article ended up being published in a Q1 journal, and complements existing studies on T. gondii and dementia and cognitive deficits as well. It also points towards a muscular localisation of bradyzoites in chronic toxoplasmosis.
Publication Date: 2025-09-05