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. 2022 May 11:27:e00162.
doi: 10.1016/j.fawpar.2022.e00162. eCollection 2022 Jun.

Congenital toxoplasmosis: Should we still care about screening?

Eskild Petersen  1   2 , Valeria Meroni  3 , Daniel V Vasconcelos-Santos  4 , Laurent Mandelbrot  5 , Francois Peyron  6
Affiliations

Congenital toxoplasmosis: Should we still care about screening?

Eskild Petersen et al. Food Waterborne Parasitol. .

Abstract

Prenatal systematic screening for congenital toxoplasmosis has been performed in Austria and France since 1975 and neonatal screening for congenital toxoplasmosis has been part of the New England Newborn screening program since 1986. In this narrative review we review the data leading up to the systematic screening programs in Austria and France, highlighting the main finding of the European Union funded research in the 1990s and early 2000s. Different descriptive studies of the effect of pre- or postnatal treatment are discussed. Toxoplasma gondii has different genetic lineages with different pathogenicity in humans. This means that results in areas with a low pathogenic lineage cannot be extrapolated to an area with highly pathogenic lineages. The importance of meat as a source of infection is discussed in the light of an increased prevalence of T.gondii in organic livestock production .

Keywords: Congenital toxoplasmosis; Screening; Toxoplasma gondii.

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Conflict of interest statement

On behalf of all authors we declare no conflict of interest.

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