Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection among patients of a tertiary hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, PR China

Yu-Bin Guan; Xiao-Xiao Sun; Shao-Lian Chen; Xiao-Ting Zhu; Zhi-Hua Zeng; Han-Wei Lu; Hong-Mei Feng; Yu Guo; Wen-Gong Jiang; Kui Xiong; Xiao-Rong Yang; Ho-Woo Nam; Zhao-Shou Yang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0286430

Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii infection among patients of a tertiary hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, PR China

PLoS One. 2023 Jul 10;18(7):e0286430. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286430. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ The First Affiliated Hospital/School of Clinical Medicine of Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P.R. China.
² Department of Parasitology, College of Medicine, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) among patients in Guangzhou city, South China, and to identify susceptible patient populations and analyze the causes of infection differences.

Methods: From May 2020 to May 2022, a total of 637 sera were collected from patients, and 205 sera were collected from health participants as health control. All sera were examined by colloidal gold kits to detect the positivity of antibodies against T. gondii. And the positivity of antibodies in sera was confirmed with ARCHITECT i2000SR system.

Results: The prevalence of T. gondii infection in patients was 7.06% (45/637), which was lower than the prevalence in health participants 4.88% (10/205). Among patients, 34 (5.34%) were positive only for IgG, 10 (1.57%) were only for IgM, and 1 (0.16%) was positive for both IgG and IgM. There was a significant difference in prevalence between male and female patients, but not among different age groups or diseases groups. The prevalence of T. gondii infection in diseases groups varied. The prevalence was relatively high in patients with the disorders of thyroid gland and the malignant neoplasms of digestive organs, which suggests that caution should be taken to avoid T. gondii infection in these patients. Surprisingly, the prevalence was quite low in diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma (DLBC) patients. This may be due to the overexpression of TNF-α in tumor tissues of DLBC patients and the higher protein level of TNF-α in sera of DLBC patients.

Conclusion: This study provides a systematic exploration of the prevalence of T. gondii infection in patients in a tertiary hospital. Our data contributes to a better understanding of the epidemic investigation of T. gondii among patients in South China, which can help the prevention and treatment of the disease caused by T. gondii infection.

Copyright: © 2023 Guan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Antibodies, Protozoan
China / epidemiology
Female
Humans
Immunoglobulin G
Immunoglobulin M
Lymphoma, Large B-Cell, Diffuse*
Male
Risk Factors
Seroepidemiologic Studies
Tertiary Care Centers
Toxoplasma*
Toxoplasmosis*
Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha

Substances

Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha
Antibodies, Protozoan
Immunoglobulin G
Immunoglobulin M

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31602040), the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou (grant no. 202103000051), and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program of Guangdong Pharmaceutical University (grant no. S202010573038). There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.