For women, it's actually supposed to be a magic cure for social anxiety:
From
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20975555-29277,00.html :
Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.
On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.
So if you're a woman and want to be outgoing and attractive and have lots of sex, roll around in litter boxes and stop cooking your meat.
I find it difficult to imagine how a parasite can evolve to make men stupid ugly sociopaths while making women friendlier and prettier at the same time. Anything's possible, but such opposite results for different genders of the same species makes me suspicious. The article does note "Dr Boulter said the recent Czech Republic research was not conclusive" but of course the media wants to sell it as fact because that makes them richer.
Wikipedia is a bit more cautious:
There has been speculation that human behavior may also be affected in some ways, and correlations have been found between latent Toxoplasma infections and various characteristics such as decreased novelty-seeking behavior, slower reactions, feelings of insecurity, and neuroticism.[7]
Several independent pieces of evidence point towards a possible role of Toxoplasma infection in some cases of schizophrenia and paranoia, but this theory does not seem to account for many cases.[8] A recent study has indicated toxoplasmosis is also correlated strongly with an increase in boy births in humans, leading to an alteration of the human sex ratio.[9] According to the researchers, "depending on the antibody concentration, the probability of the birth of a boy can increase up to a value of 0.72 ... which means that for every 260 boys born, 100 girls are born." The study also notes a mean rate of 0.60 to 0.65 (as opposed to the normal 0.51) for Toxoplasma positive mothers.
One study suggests that a possible behavior modification is that people not infected with the parasite found women with toxoplasma more attractive than women who don't have toxoplasma. [10]
In other words a correlation is established, but correlation is not causation (though causation seems pretty clear in the boy births case, I suppose). For example, we know that you're much more likely to get infected by eating undercooked meat. It's possible that people who don't cook their meat are statistically more likely to have those same issues for some other reason.
The change in behavior of rats is clear and has obvious evolutionary use. Humans should stay in the "maybe, even probably, but we'll see" column. I'd be much more convinced if they showed infected people suddenly go out and adopt ten cats, since that'd be of use to the parasite.
At any rate, don't become a victim of
cyberchondria.
