{"id":178192,"date":"2023-12-12T23:22:47","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T05:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/childhood-cat-exposure-once-again-linked-to-schizophrenia"},"modified":"2023-12-12T23:22:47","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T05:22:47","slug":"childhood-cat-exposure-once-again-linked-to-schizophrenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/childhood-cat-exposure-once-again-linked-to-schizophrenia","title":{"rendered":"Childhood Cat Exposure Once Again Linked to Schizophrenia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/childhood-cat-exposure-once-again-linked-to-schizophrenia2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>People may be more than two times likelier to develop schizophrenia-related disorders if they owned cats during childhood than if they didn\u2019t:<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Living with cats as a child has once again been linked to mental health disorders, because our furry friends apparently can\u2019t catch a break.<\/p>\n<p>In a new meta-analysis <a href=\"https:\/\/gwern.net\/doc\/cat\/psychology\/2023-mcgrath.pdf\" class=\"\">published in the journal <em>Schizophrenia Bulletin<\/em><\/a>, Australian researchers identified 17 studies between 1980 and 2023 that seemed to associate cat ownership in childhood with schizophrenia-related disorders \u2014 a sample size narrowed down from a whopping 1,915 studies that dealt with cats during that 43-year time period.<\/p>\n<p>As anyone who\u2019s read anything about cats and mental health knows, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that infection from the <em>Toxoplasma gondii<\/em> parasite, which is found in cat feces and undercooked red meat, may be linked to all sorts of surprising things. From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC7040223\/\" class=\"\">mental illness<\/a> to an <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/29259726\/\" class=\"\">interest in BDSM<\/a> or a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0014489418301814\" class=\"\">propensity for car crashes<\/a>, toxoplasmosis \u2014 that\u2019s the infection that comes from <em>t. gondii<\/em> exposure \u2014 has been thought of as a massive risk factor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC117239\/\" class=\"\">for decades now<\/a>, which is why doctors now advise pregnant people not to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/parasites\/toxoplasmosis\/gen_info\/pregnant.html\" class=\"\">clean cat litter<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/americanpregnancy.org\/healthy-pregnancy\/pregnancy-health-wellness\/foods-to-avoid-during-pregnancy\/\" class=\"\">eat undercooked meat<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People may be more than two times likelier to develop schizophrenia-related disorders if they owned cats during childhood than if they didn\u2019t: Living with cats as a child has once again been linked to mental health disorders, because our furry friends apparently can\u2019t catch a break. In a new meta-analysis published in the journal Schizophrenia [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}