Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Our study of risk factors for T. gondii infection was a case-control design to evaluate recent infection, not a cross-sectional study of T. gondii infection prevalence in a population.In our study, case-patients with recent infection were similar in age to T. gondii-negative control-patients, although among women the mean age of case-patients (33 years) differed slightly from that of control-patients (29 years) (p = 0.03, t-test).In addition, multivariate analysis comparing the case-patients with control-patients showed that age was not a significant factor.However, when we kept age in the multivariate model for women (p = 0.87 for age in the model), the odds ratio for having had children changed little, from 14.94 (95% confidence interval [CI] 3.68-60.73)to 14.01 (95% CI 2.88-68.08).Therefore, we do think that, in this study population, having had children is a risk factor for T. gondii infection among women.Dr Gomez-Marin also states that we did not evaluate drinking water-related factors.However, in our methods section (1), we indicated that our questionnaire asked about a comprehensive set of risk factors related to drinking water.Specifically, the questionnaire asked about the types of water (city, private well, and others, including bottled water); chlorination; filtering of water; and ingestion of water from streams, lakes, rivers, ponds, or other sources.Although we evaluated numerous water-related factors, we did not find them to be significant in this study, which applies to 1 area of Brazil.In other areas of Brazil, however, studies in which 1 of our authors (J.L.J.) has been involved have found water to be a risk factor or a source of infection (2,3).Again, we
Source: Emerging infectious diseases
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Medicine
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2068559784