Department of Vascular Surgery, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, People's Republic of China.
Department of Medical Imaging, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, People's Republic of China.
Acta Trop. 2020 Nov;211:105554. doi: 10.1016/j.actatropica.2020.105554. Epub 2020 Jun 3.
Toxoplasma gondii, an intracellular protozoan parasite, can induce various clinical symptoms. T. gondii has been considered to play an important role in the pathogenesis of lung diseases. This survey was conducted to explore the correlation between T. gondii infection and lung diseases through a case-control study carried out in Shandong province, eastern China. In the present survey, T. gondii IgG antibodies were found in 76/398 (19.10%) of patients with lung diseases, which was significantly higher (P < 0.001) than the level found in the control subjects (35/398; 8.79%) through serological diagnosis. Patients with lung cancer have the highest T. gondii seroprevalence (26.19%), followed by Pulmonary cyst (25.00%), Tuberculosis (17.07%), Pneumonia (16.33%) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (16.05%). Moreover, a semi-nest PCR targeted T. gondii B1 gene was employed to detect the T. gondii DNA in the blood samples. T. gondii DNA was detected in 5.53% blood samples of patients with lung diseases and 2.51% control subjects, respectively. The present study firstly shows that T. gondii has a high probability to infect the patients with lung diseases. Thus, the potential presence of T. gondii in patients with lung diseases should be appreciated during in the course of treatment and safeguard procedures should be implemented to protect vulnerable patients with lung diseases.
刚地弓形虫是一种细胞内原生动物寄生虫，可引起多种临床症状。刚地弓形虫被认为在肺部疾病的发病机制中起重要作用。本研究通过在中国东部山东省进行的病例对照研究，探讨了弓形虫感染与肺部疾病之间的相关性。在本研究中，通过血清学诊断发现，76/398（19.10%）例肺部疾病患者的血清中存在刚地弓形虫 IgG 抗体，明显高于对照组（35/398；8.79%）（P < 0.001）。肺癌患者的刚地弓形虫血清阳性率最高（26.19%），其次是肺囊肿（25.00%）、肺结核（17.07%）、肺炎（16.33%）和慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）（16.05%）。此外，采用针对刚地弓形虫 B1 基因的半巢式 PCR 检测了血液样本中的刚地弓形虫 DNA。在肺部疾病患者的血液样本中，分别检测到 5.53%和 2.51%的对照组患者的刚地弓形虫 DNA。本研究首次表明，刚地弓形虫很可能感染肺部疾病患者。因此，在治疗过程中应注意肺部疾病患者中潜在的刚地弓形虫感染，并应采取保护措施保护易受感染的肺部疾病患者。
