ArticleFolia parasitologica2023
Parasitic manipulation or side effects? The effects of past Toxoplasma gondii and Borrelia spp. infections on human personality and cognitive performance are not mediated by impaired health.
Article in Folia parasitologica, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- From Infection to Anxiety: A Sequential Model Linking Latent Toxoplasmosis to Psychological Distress via Health and Stress.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2026Article
- Beyond Latency: ChronicBiomedicines · 2025Review
- Thirty years of studying latent toxoplasmosis: behavioural, physiological, and health insights.Folia parasitologica · 2025Review
- Diseases Caused by and Behaviors Associated withPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Association of MaternalHealth science reports · 2024Article
- Cognitive Effects ofPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi s. l. and even more the protist Toxoplasma gondii Nicolle et Manceaux, 1908, are known to affect the behaviour and mental health of their animal and human hosts. Both pathogens infect a significant fraction of human population, both are neurotropic and survive in the host's body for a long time. While latent infections were thought to be clinically asymptomatic, recent studies suggest otherwise, revealing adverse effects on human health. It was hypothesised that the specific behavioural effects of these pathogens may be side effects of general health impairments in infected individuals. This hypothesis was tested using about one hour-long survey consisting of questionnaires and performance tests on a cohort of 7,762 members of the internet population. Results showed that individuals infected with T. gondii reported worse physical and mental health, and those infected with Borrelia spp. reported worse physical health than uninfected controls. Furthermore, infected and noninfected individuals differed in several personality traits, including conscientiousness, pathogen disgust, injury disgust, Machiavellianism, narcissism, tribalism, anti-authoritarianism, intelligence, reaction time, and precision. While the majority of behavioural effects associated with Borrelia infection were similar to those associated with Toxoplasma infection, some differences were observed, such as performance in the Stroop test. Path analyses and nonparametric partial Kendall correlation tests showed that these effects were not mediated by impaired health in infected individuals, contradicting the side effects hypothesis.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.