PEDIATRICS Vol. 22 No. 3 September 1958, pp. 559-574
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TOXOPLASMOSIS

Harry A. Feldman M.D.1

1 Department of Preventive Medicine, State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center at Syracuse

THAT toxoplasmosis represents a problem of special interest to pediatricians comes as no surprise, since the first instances of proven human infection were detected in newborn infants by Wolf, Cowen and Paige. Although Toxoplasma gondii was first recognized in 1908 by Nicolle and Manceaux in North Africa and by Splendore in Brazil, and although there had been sporadic reports of other encounters with this parasite, it aroused no great excitement until the afore-mentioned report of its unquestionable role in the encephalomyelitis of infancy. In the years immediately following this publication there was a flurry of interest in toxoplasmosis but this was interrupted by the war years. Beginning with the descriptions of new, precise serologic procedures in 1948, human and animal toxoplasma infections have become of such world-wide concern that it is now almost impossible to remain abreast of the mushrooming list of publications which deal with the many facets of toxoplasmosis.

The recognized manifestations of human and animal disease are so broad as to pique the curiosities not only of pediatricians but also of pathologists, ophthalmologists, internists, epidemiologists, veterinarians and biologists. While toxoplasmosis represents a somewhat new disease, which of itself arouses excitement, much of its appeal is related to the causative agent's characteristics: it is an intracellular parasite which is readily observed microscopically and has little concern for the kind of cell in which it multiplies; and there are serologic procedures available for limited or broad-scale studies, such as are not possible with most other disease-producing agents. Another unusual aspect of the organism is that the illnesses which it may initiate are similar in all hosts.

Because of the voluminous literature which now deals with toxoplasmosis, it is the objective of this review to summarize the present status of certain aspects of the problem, rather than to attempt a survey of the total bibliography.




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H. A. REIMANN
Infectious Diseases: Annual Review of Significant Publications
Arch Intern Med, July 1, 1959; 104(1): 108 - 151.
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