Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A disease caused by the sporozoan Toxoplasma gondii, especially:
- n. A congenital disease characterized by lesions of the central nervous system that can cause blindness and brain damage.
- n. An acquired disease characterized by fever, swollen lymph nodes, and lesions in the liver, heart, lungs, and brain.
Wiktionary
WordNet 3.0
- n. infection caused by parasites transmitted to humans from infected cats; if contracted by a pregnant woman it can result in serious damage to the fetus
Etymologies
- Toxoplasma + -osis (Wiktionary)
Examples
“One way to prevent getting toxoplasmosis is to wash your hands frequently and to wash raw fruit and vegetables in a slight vinegar solution, both of which I do.”
“Cat waste carries a disease, toxoplasmosis, which is harmless to most people but can be deadly to anyone with a compromised immune system.”
“The disease caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii is called toxoplasmosis and has been linked to 'personality' changes in rats and mice.”
“The organism has long been known to cause toxoplasmosis, which is why pregnant women are told to stay away from litter boxes, and "in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients.”
“But, you know, the thing that comes to mind that I think most people might be familiar with is toxoplasmosis, which is - it's not a virus, it's a protozoan, but you know how they say pregnant women shouldn't clean their litter boxes, they should get somebody else to do it, and that's because they can pick this up from the litter box.”
“Someone with a toxoplasma infection, called toxoplasmosis, is more than twice as likely to develop schizophrenia, according to Yolken.”
“T. gondii infection causes a disease called toxoplasmosis that produces mild flu-like symptoms and only really threatens foetuses and those with weak immune systems.”
“Some of these diseases, such as toxoplasmosis and bartonella, or cat scratch disease, can also infect humans.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘toxoplasmosis’.
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Fantastic Cats!, Open list
Meow! Roar! My favorite animals! words about cats.
pussycat, cat, Siamese, Persian, tiger, kitten, kindle, paw, lion of lucerne, lion, murr, wildcat and 39 more...
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Anything to do with cats
if you're a cat freak like i am - then this is the list for you
fur ball, i laughed, i cried, it was better tha..., T.S. Eliot, Memory, Andrew Lloyd Webber, feline, mew, Persian, purr, can opener and 19 more...
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polymorph's Words
pornerastic, yeaux, enantiadromia, synchronicity, transubstantiation, sensimilla, slough, scaphism, symbiosis, prolix, orgiastic, cryptogamic and 245 more...
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Pregnant with Possibilities (Includin...
For double the fun, see also Congenital Conditions.
obstetrics, obstetrician, neonatology, neonatologist, isolette, postpartum, prepartum, puerperal fever, induce, pregnancy, episiotomy, meconium and 324 more...
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Pernicious parasites
fluke, helminth, tapeworm, river blindness, onchocerciasis, chagas disease, american trypanos..., bilharzia, schistosomiasis, dracunculiasis, guinea worm disease, lymphatic filariasis and 55 more...
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mcbaine's Words
surficant, vicissitude, erinaceous, battousai, himura, wang, pedagogical, pedantic, immure, tertiary, tetrahedron, widget and 104 more...
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science words
volvox, bilirubin, hematoma, toxoplasmosis, igneous, lagomorph, pipettor
Tweets
Looking for tweets for toxoplasmosis.
patiomensch A character in Trainspotting dies from this, in combo with AIDS. Apr 16, 2007
polymorph This fascinating disease was recently blamed in the news for turning women into sex kittens and men into alley cats.
The article made light of the feline terms for human behavior because the parasite normally infects mice and cats. It appears to also alter the behavior of infected mice. It is theorized that it triggers the release of dopamine in the mouse's brain when a mouse encounters the odor of a cat. Infected mice then will seek out such locations (which healthy mice avoid), presumably because the parasite wants to be eaten in order to complete it's cycle- the dopamine is a neurochemical carrot that counteracts the mouse's instinctive avoidance of cats.
Apr 15, 2007