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This open access book analyzes the evidence linking Toxoplasma gondii to the increasing incidence of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in the United States. Initially establishing that infectious agents are regularly transmitted from animals to humans, lead to human disease, and that infectious agents can cause psychosis, it then examines the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii in detail. Infecting 40 million Americans, Toxoplasma gondii is known to cause congenital infections, eye disease, and encephalitis for individuals who are immunosuppressed. It has also been shown to change the behavior of nonhuman mammals, as well as to alter some personality traits in humans. After discussing the clinical evidence linking Toxoplasma gondii to human psychosis, the book elucidates the epidemiological evidence further supporting this linkage; including the proportional increase in incidence of human psychosis as cats transitioned to domestication over 800 years. Finally, the book assesses the magnitude of the problem and suggests solutions. Parasites, Pussycats and Psychosis: The Unknown Dangers of Human Toxoplasmosis provides a comprehensive review of the evidence linking human psychosis in the United States to infections of Toxoplasma gondii. It will be of interest to infectious disease specialists, general practitioners, scientists, historians, and cat-lovers.

Medicine: general issues --- Psychiatry --- Open Access --- zoonosis --- Toxoplasma gondii --- domestication --- madness

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The highlight of this eBook is to bring new insights into parasites in the tropic. To achieve that, much has been discussed about risk assessment, infection rates, disease burden, hormones and mechanism of immune response, genetic expression and susceptibility as well as, therapeutic modalities. Authors raised hypothesis, discuss concepts, and show open questions. The remaining important issues to resolve questions within parasites in the tropic – a new paradigm shift are briefly discussed below. T. gondii, feline as the definitive host, is regarded as one of the most important parasites in the tropic. Human, as an accidental host, is the only species who still drinks raw milk or milk products particularly from animal sources. Based on the first paper, the author simplifies on how safe to drink milk to prevent the transmission of T. gondii by the insistence on heat treated milk before consumption. It is interesting to explore how hormone plays its role in Toxoplasma infection. Based on the second paper, the authors elucidated from thirty studies from humans, animals and cell cultures. Of these, it was shown that Toxoplasma infection was controlled by the presence of hormones found in different animal models. However, it is still premature to conclude which hormone that has a significant relationship with Toxoplasma infection. It estimates that one-third of the world population infected with T. gondii but the majority are asymptomatic. Based on the third paper, it demonstrated that people having low prevalent of Toxoplasma infection by having close contact with animals. This study will enhance positive attitudes for more people to be committed towards helping animals. For more than three decades, T. gondii has since been identified as one of the most important opportunistic parasitic pathogens in immunocompromised. Seroprevalence of chronic toxoplasmosis was detected in at least one-third of HIV-infected individuals in the regional hospital of southern Thailand, as reported from the fourth paper. Thailand has successfully formulated anti-retroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS patients and as a result reported a rare incidence of AIDS-related cerebral toxoplasmosis (CT) in this setting. Based on the fifth paper, the authors demonstrated low IL-10 (Th2 response) and IFN-γ (Th1 response) as well as high TNF-α were produced in ocular and cerebral toxoplasmosis in AIDS patients. This might be due to South American strains and/or the genetic susceptibility of the host. Due to high genetic diversity of T. gondii in Brazil, the sixth paper demonstrated that Calomys callosus survived chronically infected by T. gondii clonal type II strain and reinfected by Brazilian strains. However, congenital toxoplasmosis occurred leading to damaging effects of the developing fetus. The seventh paper conducted a questionnaire-based study on knowledge and practice on Toxoplasma infection among pregnant women from Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. It clearly demonstrated that health education, a core value, is the cheapest and the best option to envisage the preventive strategies of feto-maternal toxoplasmosis from this region. For treatment modality of congenital toxoplasmosis, a novel experimental therapeutic synergism of diclazuril plus atovaquone combination shows a promising outcome with no toxicity in treating this condition, as demonstrated in the eighth paper. However, it warrants for future trials to prove its properties against T. gondii in different clinical scenarios of human toxoplasmosis for more effective therapeutic regimens. In the ninth paper, the author discussed the pathogenesis of maternal and congenital toxoplasmosis, the current treatment in clinical practice, and the experimental treatment approaches for promising future trials. Overall, this protozoan represents the most extraordinary example of parasite in the tropic and beyond scientific imagination. Hence, there are still many challenges ahead and waiting for more explorations on T. gondii, the parasite that never dies. Based on the findings from the tenth paper, it is interesting to identify common gene targets between Glossina p. gambiensis and Glossina m. morsitans that might shed some lights as a suitable candidate for controlling both acute and chronic forms of sleeping sickness. This therefore requires further investigations using proteomic analysis to ascertain the corresponding genes and its proteins as well as functional role that may help the search for more novel therapeutic agents.

Gene Expression --- Toxoplasma gondii --- Health --- immune response --- congenital toxoplasmosis --- animal --- Trypanosoma brucei spp. --- Epidemiology --- novel drugs --- hormone

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This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact

Science: general issues --- Infectious & contagious diseases --- Plasmodis --- Toxoplasma --- Toxoplasmosis --- Malaria --- Trypanosoma --- Giardia --- artemisin --- protozoa --- protozoan --- Vaccines --- chimioinformatics --- reverse vaccines --- Immunomodulation

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Ensuring microbiological safety in the food (of animal origin) chain is a challenging task due to the complex interactions among animals, humans and the environment. However, technological and analytical advances in recent years have provided a broader insight into microbiological hazards in the food chain and risk assessment. The objective of the proposed Special Issue “Study of Microbiological Safety in the Food Chain” was therefore to obtain scientific papers addressing microbiological hazards in the food chain, such as bacterial antimicrobial resistance, bacterial or fungal spoilage of foods, the antimicrobial potential of the indigenous microbiota, the aminogenic or amine-reducing capacity of the microbiota, and papers that apply novel methods to study the food microbiome to discover potential, previously unknown microbial hazards. This Special Issue of the journal Processes entitled “Study of Microbiological Safety in the Food Chain” consists of nine research papers and one review paper. Four papers focus on the microbiological aspects of milk and dairy products, three on meat and meat products, two on eggs, and one on various market foods. The microorganisms of interest were species of lactobacilli, enterococci and molds, Yersinia enterocolitica, Bacillus cereus and the general microbiota in certain foods.

Humanities --- Social interaction --- antimicrobial resistance --- Lactobacillus johnsonii --- Lactobacillus zeae --- MALDI-TOF-MS --- milk --- PCR --- mold --- egg --- Penicillium --- colony morphology --- Ehrlich reaction --- creatine --- restriction enzyme --- PCR-ITS-RFLP --- egg quality --- Cladosporium --- Fusarium --- raw goat milk --- enterococcal species --- safety --- virulence factor --- bacteriocins --- meat safety --- biological hazards --- Yersinia enterocolitica --- Toxoplasma gondii --- food chain information --- emerging foodborne pathogens --- Bacillus --- probiotics --- ewe --- milk lump cheese --- microbiome --- microbial flora --- dry aged beef --- rancidity --- index --- meat products --- dry-cured hams --- sensory evaluation --- surface moulds --- Aspergillus --- Croatian regions --- biogenic amines --- enterococci --- lactobacilli --- lactococci --- ripened cheese --- n/a

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The discovery of new drugs is one of pharmaceutical research's most exciting and challenging tasks. Unfortunately, the conventional drug discovery procedure is chronophagous and seldom successful; furthermore, new drugs are needed to address our clinical challenges (e.g., new antibiotics, new anticancer drugs, new antivirals).Within this framework, drug repositioning—finding new pharmacodynamic properties for already approved drugs—becomes a worthy drug discovery strategy.Recent drug discovery techniques combine traditional tools with in silico strategies to identify previously unaccounted properties for drugs already in use. Indeed, big data exploration techniques capitalize on the ever-growing knowledge of drugs' structural and physicochemical properties, drug–target and drug–drug interactions, advances in human biochemistry, and the latest molecular and cellular biology discoveries.Following this new and exciting trend, this book is a collection of papers introducing innovative computational methods to identify potential candidates for drug repositioning. Thus, the papers in the Special Issue In Silico Strategies for Prospective Drug Repositionings introduce a wide array of in silico strategies such as complex network analysis, big data, machine learning, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation, and QSAR; these strategies target diverse diseases and medical conditions: COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 pulmonary fibrosis, non-small lung cancer, multiple sclerosis, toxoplasmosis, psychiatric disorders, or skin conditions.

Medicine --- Pharmaceutical industries --- COVID-19 --- drug repurposing --- topological data analysis --- persistent Betti function --- SARS-CoV-2 --- network-based pharmacology --- combination therapy --- nucleoside GS-441524 --- fluoxetine --- synergy --- antidepressant --- natural compounds --- QSAR --- molecular docking --- drug repositioning --- UK Biobank --- vaccine --- LC-2/ad cell line --- drug discovery --- docking --- MM-GBSA calculation --- molecular dynamics --- cytotoxicity assay --- GWAS --- multiple sclerosis --- oxidative stress --- repurposing --- ADME-Tox --- bioinformatics --- complex network analysis --- modularity clustering --- ATC code --- hidradenitis suppurativa --- acne inversa --- transcriptome --- proteome --- comorbid disorder --- biomarker --- signaling pathway --- druggable gene --- drug-repositioning --- MEK inhibitor --- MM/GBSA --- Glide docking --- MD simulation --- MM/PBSA --- single-cell RNA sequencing --- pulmonary fibrosis --- biological networks --- p38α MAPK --- allosteric inhibitors --- in silico screening --- computer-aided drug discovery --- network analysis --- psychiatric disorders --- medications --- psychiatry --- mental disorders --- toxoplasmosis --- Toxoplasma gondii --- in vitro screening --- drug targets --- drug-disease interaction --- target-disease interaction --- DPP4 inhibitors --- lipid rafts