Toxoplasma gondii Serointensity and Seropositivity: Heritability and Household-Related Associations in the Old Order Amish

( ) is an intracellular parasite infecting one third of the world's population. Latent infection has been associated with mental illness, including schizophrenia and suicidal behavior. IgG antibody titers were measured via ELISA. The heritability of IgG was estimated using a mixed model that in...

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Published inInternational journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 16; no. 19; p. 3732
Main Authors Duffy, Allyson R, O'Connell, Jeffrey R, Pavlovich, Mary, Ryan, Kathleen A, Lowry, Christopher A, Daue, Melanie, Raheja, Uttam K, Brenner, Lisa A, Markon, André O, Punzalan, Cecile M, Dagdag, Aline, Hill, Dolores E, Pollin, Toni I, Seyfang, Andreas, Groer, Maureen W, Mitchell, Braxton D, Postolache, Teodor T
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 03.10.2019
MDPI
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Summary:( ) is an intracellular parasite infecting one third of the world's population. Latent infection has been associated with mental illness, including schizophrenia and suicidal behavior. IgG antibody titers were measured via ELISA. The heritability of IgG was estimated using a mixed model that included fixed effects for age and sex and random kinship effect. Of 2017 Old Order Amish participants, 1098 had positive titers (54.4%). The heritability for serointensity was estimated to be 0.22 ( = 1.7 × 10 and for seropositivity, it was estimated to be 0.28 ( = 1.9 × 10 ). Shared household environmental effects (i.e., household effects) were also determined. Household effects, modeled as a random variable, were assessed as the phenotypic covariance between any two individuals who had the same current address (i.e., contemporaneous household), and nuclear household (i.e., the phenotypic covariance between parents and children only, not other siblings or spouses). Household effects did not account for a significant proportion of variance in either serointensity or seropositivity. Our results suggest a significant familial aggregation of serointensity and seropositivity with significant heritability. The shared household does not contribute significantly to family aggregation with , suggesting that there are possible unmeasured non-household shared and non-shared environmental factors that may play a significant role. Furthermore, the small but significant heritability effects justify the exploration of genetic vulnerability to exposure, infection, virulence, and neurotropism.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph16193732