Seroprevalence of Toxoplasmosis in Pregnant Women in Daejeon, Korea

Young Hyun Ko; Mina Lee; So Young Shin; Sun Hoe Koo; Jeong Hoon Song; Jinsook Lim; Kye Chul Kwon

doi:10.3343/lmo.2011.1.4.4

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Ko, Lee, Shin, Koo, Song, Lim, and Kwon: Seroprevalence of Toxoplasmosis in Pregnant Women in Daejeon, Korea

Original Article

Diagnostic Immunology

Laboratory Medicine Online

Laboratory Medicine Online 2011; 1(4): 190-194.

Published online: 7 October 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3343/lmo.2011.1.4.4

Seroprevalence of Toxoplasmosis in Pregnant Women in Daejeon, Korea

Young Hyun Ko, M.D.¹, Mina Lee, M.D.², So Young Shin, M.D.³, Sun Hoe Koo, M.D.¹, Jeong Hoon Song, M.D.¹, Jinsook Lim, M.D.¹, Kye Chul Kwon, M.D.¹

¹Department of Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea.

²Departments of Obsterics and Gynecology, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea.

³Department of Laboratory Medicine, Daejeon St. Mary's Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea College of Medicine, Daejeon, Korea.

Corresponding author: Kye Chul Kwon, M.D. Department of Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, Chungnam National University, 640 Daesa-dong, Jung-gu, Daejeon 301-721, Korea. Tel: +82-42-280-7799, Fax: +82-42-257-5365, kckwon@cnu.ac.kr

Received 7 March 2011 Revised 19 July 2011 Accepted 11 August 2011

(open-access):

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background

Toxoplasma gondii can cause devastating disease in the fetus and newborn infant. Serologic testing of pregnant women for Toxoplasma-specific antibodies can be used to identify those women at risk of transmitting Toxoplasma gondii infection. In Korea, despite a few reports on the seroprevalence of Toxoplasma (Toxo) antibody, the incidence of acute or chronic toxoplasma infection during pregnancy has not been well established. We performed a prospective screening for Toxoplasma antibodies to obtain a basic epidemiological data on the seroprevalence of acute and chronic toxoplasma infection.

Methods

During a 6-month period, 787 pregnant women at various weeks of gestation were enrolled in the prospective study. Toxo IgG and IgM antibodies were determined by the Abbott AxSYM Toxo IgG and IgM assays. Serum specimens showing positive results of both IgG and IgM antibodies were further tested using the Abbott ARCHITECT Toxo IgG Avidity test.

Results

The seropositivities of Toxo-specific IgG and IgM antibodies in this cohort were 2.3% (18/787) and 0.1% (1/787), respectively. No woman showed positive results for both Toxoplasma IgG and IgM antibodies. One specimen showing IgG positive and IgM grayzone results was tested by Toxo IgG avidity test and a low avidity test result (9%) was obtained, suggesting a possible acute primary infection.

Conclusions

This study was the first trial on the investigation of the seroprevalence of both IgG and IgM antibodies in Korea, and we found that the seroprevalence of the antibodies was lower than that previously reported.

Keywords: Toxoplasma, Toxo-IgG avidity, Pregnancy, Seroprevalence

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma antibodies in Korean pregnant women in Daejeon area

Table 2

Relationship between Toxoplasma IgG antibody and maternal and gestational ages

P values were determined by using the t-test.

Notes

This study was financially supported by research fund of Chungnam National University in 2008.

This article is available from http://www.labmedonline.org

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