Primary maternal infection with toxoplasmosis during pregnancy is frequently associated with transplacental transmission of the parasite to the fetus. This study was conducted to test the utility of PCR assay to detect recent infections
with Toxoplasma in aborted women at various gestational ages who referred to Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of Alavi Hospital in Ardabil during 2014 and 2016. Two hundred women with a history of single or repeated abortion were investigated in this study. Blood samples were tested for specific anti-Toxoplasma IgM and IgG antibodies by ELISA. According to the results, 53.5% of the women under study were positive for anti-Toxoplasma antibodies: 4.0% of them had IgM, 43.0% had IgG, and 6.5% had both IgM and IgG. Subsequently, Nested-PCR analysis was used to detect T. gondii DNA in the placenta of subjects. In 10.5% of the women, the results were positive for 529 bp element of T. gondii.
Among them, 5 (23.8%) cases were IgM positive, 1 (4.8%) case was IgG positive, and 11 (52.4%) were both IgM and IgG positive. In 4 (19.0%) patients, none of the antibodies were found to be positive. In total, 16 patients had positive results in both ELISA and PCR methods, and 174 cases had negative results for new infection. The findings of this study revealed that T. gondii might be one of the significant factors leading to abortion, and that the analysis of placenta can be important in order to achieve increased detection sensitivity.
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The global seroprevalence of anti-Toxoplasma gondii antibodies in women who had spontaneous abortion: A systematic review and meta-analysis Tooran Nayeri, Shahabeddin Sarvi, Mahmood Moosazadeh, Afsaneh Amouei, Zahra Hosseininejad, Ahmad Daryani, Maria Angeles Gómez-Morales PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.2020; 14(3): e0008103. CrossRef
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Toxoplasma gondii is one of the major agents of infectious abortions and due to its worldwide distribution can threat healthy pregnant women who had no previous exposure to this parasite. The present study was designed to investigate the contribution of T. gondii to spontaneous abortions in Zanjan, Northwest of Iran, using ELISA method. Blood Samples were collected from 264 mothers referred to the provincial hospitals of Zanjan due to spontaneous abortion. The sera were isolated and subjected to evaluate the anti-Toxoplasma IgG, IgM and IgA antibodies. The results showed IgG positive (IgG+) in 99 cases (37.5%). A total of 68 women (25.8%) showed seroconversion with IgM or IgA or both IgM and IgA. They included: IgM+ in 21 (8.0%), IgA+ in 23 (8.7%) and both IgM+ and IgA+ in 24 (9.1%) subjects. In 23 cases, positive titers of IgM and IgG were accompanied. In general, the analysis of anti-Toxoplasma antibody patterns, showed that about 17% of the spontaneous abortions were associated with serological patterns of acute infection. According to these findings, a considerable proportion of spontaneous abortions can be attributed to T. gondii in the study area.
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