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" An Australian scientist may have found nature&amp;#039;s cure to &amp;quot;not tonight, I have a headache.&amp;quot; Nicky Boulter, a lecturer at the Institute for the Biotechnology of Infectious Diseases in Sydney, has discovered that a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii gives the female libido a noticeable boost. But before you drink the Kool-Aid (or in this case, unwashed vegetables and meat contaminated with cat feces) know that this new finding comes with a cruel irony: T. gondii has the opposite effect on men, decreasing their IQs and making them more jealous. So is it possible that a simple parasite could loosen a woman&amp;#039;s morals? It&amp;#039;s not that simple. According to Jaroslav Flegr, from the Department of Parasitology at Charles University in Prague, this theory is &amp;quot;just a product of the imagination of journalists.&amp;quot; But this isn&amp;#039;t to say that the parasite doesn&amp;#039;t do anything -- Flegr admits that T. gondii and testosterone react and published a report in August 2006 that found that women infected with the parasite are far more likely to give birth to boys. What&amp;#039;s the truth here? We talked to Boulter about his new findings. Does the Toxoplasma gondii guarantee sex, no Barry White required? As with all things in life, there are no guarantees! However, the fact that infected women tend to be more promiscuous would suggest that infected women would have more sex than uninfected women, although I don&amp;#039;t know if that has been assessed per se. If you think of the French and their high infection rates (above 50 percent of the population), everyone thinks French ladies are very sexy and sensuous -- why is that so? I definitely wouldn&amp;#039;t recommend it as a sex therapy though. For men, the story is different as the parasite makes them more morose and less attractive to women, presumably having the opposite effect in the sex stakes. T. gondii is found in 20 to 60 percent of the world&amp;#039;s population. That&amp;#039;s a lot of people. It&amp;#039;s because of the differences in diet and other risk factors. In France, they eat a lot of rare or raw meat and have a huge feral cat problem, so the incidence is up to 85 percent of people are infected, which explains their terrible driving. (Infected persons are 2.6 percent more likely to get in a traffic accident.) In other countries where they eat little meat or predominantly chicken or fish, like Japan, the incidence is very low. It all depends on cultural and dietary preferences. Outside of the fact it could increase a woman&amp;#039;s libido, this is a parasite -- what other side effects does it have? There&amp;#039;s the potential risk of developing schizophrenia or other neurological symptoms, development of AIDS or STDs through being more promiscuous and also the risk of developing fatal encephalitis (brain swelling). It&amp;#039;s especially dangerous if a woman&amp;#039;s immune system becomes compromised later in life through HIV, cancer treatments or other immunosuppressive therapies -- toxoplasmic encephalitis is a major cause of death in those patients if they&amp;#039;re not treated soon enough. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a2741/parasite042607/>