Toxocariasis and Epilepsy: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Graziella Quattrocchi, Alessandra Nicoletti, Benoit Marin, Elisa Bruno, Michel Druet-Cabanac and Pierre-Marie Preux

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2012, vol. 6, issue 8, 1-10

Abstract: Objective: Human toxocariasis is a zoonotic infection caused by the larval stages of Toxocara canis (T. canis) and less frequently Toxocara cati (T. cati). A relationship between toxocariasis and epilepsy has been hypothesized. We conducted a systematic review and a meta-analysis of available data to evaluate the strength of association between epilepsy and Toxocara spp. seropositivity and to propose some guidelines for future surveys. Data Sources: Electronic databases, the database from the Institute of Neuroepidemiology and Tropical Neurology of the University of Limoges (http://www-ient.unilim.fr/) and the reference lists of all relevant papers and books were screened up to October 2011. Methods: We performed a systematic review of literature on toxocariasis (the exposure) and epilepsy (the outcome). Two authors independently assessed eligibility and study quality and extracted data. A common odds ratio (OR) was estimated using a random-effects meta-analysis model of aggregated published data. Results: Seven case-control studies met the inclusion criteria, for a total of 1867 participants (850 cases and 1017 controls). The percentage of seropositivity (presence of anti-Toxocara spp. antibodies) was higher among people with epilepsy (PWE) in all the included studies even if the association between epilepsy and Toxocara spp. seropositivity was statistically significant in only 4 studies, with crude ORs ranging 2.04–2.85. Another study bordered statistical significance, while in 2 of the included studies no significant association was found. A significant (p

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0001775 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article/file?id ... 01775&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pntd00:0001775

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0001775

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosntds ().