They Drive
Reading this piece from the New Scientist somehow made me think of the scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1978 version, in which a guy slams on Donald Sutherland’s windshield and says, “they’re here!”
But rather than a nefarious virus brought by the solar winds, it seems there may be a parasite loose on the brains of drivers — which, really, explains a lot.
Toxoplasma, or toxo for short, starts its life cycle in rodents. To spread, it manipulates rodents’ brains, making them reckless and more likely to be eaten by cats, which then pass on the parasite through their faeces. People can catch it from eating undercooked meat from animals that had contact with cat faeces. The infection lasts for life.
It can harm fetuses, but was otherwise thought to be harmless. Recently, however, evidence has emerged that the parasite can affect our brain. People with toxo seem to have slower reactions, while those who have had traffic accidents are more likely to have toxo.
Now it seems toxo’s effect on the brain may be limited to people with a certain blood type. Jaroslav Flegr and colleagues at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, had previously discovered that toxo affected reaction times mostly in people whose blood type was rhesus negative. So they monitored 3890 military drivers for 18 months. Those who were Rh-negative and had toxo were 2.5 times as likely to have an accident as uninfected drivers who were Rh-negative, or any Rh-positive drivers (BMC Infectious Diseases, DOI: 10.1186/1471-2334-9-72).
As the minder of both cats and an infant, I was well aware of toxoplasma, but had no idea there was a road-safety angle. Does this mean toxo screening down at the DMV, or merely higher insurance rates?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 10:23 am and is filed under Traffic safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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