According to researchers from Stanley Medical Research Institute, cats carry Toxoplasma gondii or T.gondii which can be transmitted to humans – a parasitic infection that can be very deadly to pregnant women and everyone with weakened immune systems.

T. gondii is largely carried by cats, and while most people do not show symptoms even after getting infected with it, it invariable leads to toxoplasmosis – a weakened immune system disease that causes flu-like illnesses, miscarriages, fetal development disorders, and blindness in unborn babies; and it ultimately leads to mental illness and schizophrenia later in life for those already infected with it.

According to E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, and Dr. Robert H. Yolken of Stanley Laboratory of Developmental Neurovirology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, patients with age-old mental illness have largely been people who owned cats during childhood – establishing a causal link between living with cats and developing bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses at old age.

According to the authors of the study, “Cat ownership in childhood has now been reported in three studies to be significantly more common in families in which the child is later diagnosed with schizophrenia or another serious mental illness.”

This is not the first study to link household cats with the T. gondii parasite, an earlier study published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica examined several research materials that showed people infected with the cat parasite have double chances of developing some form of mental issues later in life, most especially schizophrenia.

To protect lovers of cats, the authors advise that “Children can be protected by keeping their cat exclusively indoors and always covering the sandbox when not in use,” and this is one advice parents must look into.

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