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. 2018 Dec 6;18(1):629.
doi: 10.1186/s12879-018-3547-1.

Is Toxoplasma gondii infection correlated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease?- a population-based study

Jiaofeng Huang  1 , Haoyang Zhang  2 , Shiying Liu  1 , Mingfang Wang  1 , Bo Wan  3 , Bharat Velani  4 , Yueyong Zhu  1 , Su Lin  5
Affiliations

Is Toxoplasma gondii infection correlated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease?- a population-based study

Jiaofeng Huang et al. BMC Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have suggested that Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) infection might be associated with fatty liver disease. However, the relationship between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and T. gondii infection has not been investigated in a large population. We aimed to study the relationship between those two diseases using a population-based dataset from the United States.

Methods: The data were collected from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) between 1988 and 1994. Statistical analysis was applied to compare the prevalence of NAFLD in anti-T. gondii antibody-positive participants with antibody-negative ones.

Results: A total of 9465 persons with a mean age of 44.33 ± 16.21 years, 46.9% of which were males, were included in the final analysis. Their mean BMI was 27.60 ± 5.96 kg/m2. A total of 2520 participants (26.62%) were positive for the T. gondii antibody. There was an increasing trend of seroprevalence of T. gondii with age (P for trend < 0.001). The incidence of NAFLD in the seropositive group was higher than that in the seronegative group (27.10% vs 23.40%, p < 0.001). In addition to this, metabolic biomarkers, including serum lipid, fasting blood-glucose, and uric acid were also significantly higher in the seropositive group. However, multivariate analysis revealed that T. gondii infection was not an independent risk factor for NAFLD. Age was independently correlated with both the prevalence of T. gondii and NAFLD.

Conclusions: Patients with T. gondii infection may have a higher prevalence of NAFLD. Age may have an effect on the increase of NAFLD in the T. gondii seropositive population.

Keywords: NHANES; Non-alcoholic fatty liver; Toxoplasma gondii.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Seroprevalence of T. gondii and prevalence of NAFLD. a Seroprevalence of T. gondii increases with age. In general, the NAFLD group had a slightly higher positive rate of T. gondii antibodies than the non-NAFLD group. b Seroprevalence of T. gondii was higher in the male and NAFLD groups. c Prevalence of NAFLD was measured according to age. The scatter plot and its loess fitted line showed a positive association between the prevalence of NAFLD and age. However, the lines representing the T. gondii positive group and the T. gondii negative group entangle, indicating that there is no significant difference in the prevalence of NAFLD between the two groups after adjusting for age
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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