Open Journal of Medical Microbiology, 2018, 8, 109-117 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojmm ISSN Online: 2165-3380 ISSN Print: 2165-3372 DOI: 10.4236/ojmm.2018.84010 Nov. 21, 2018 109 Open Journal of Medical Microbiology Infection of Toxoplasma gondii in Humans and Livestock Animals: An Emerging Silent Threat for Bangladesh Taibur Rahman * , Atiqur Rahman, Sajib Chakraborty Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh Abstract Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular, zoonotic protozoan parasite that causes toxoplasmosis. It can potentially infect almost all mammalian and avian hosts including one-third of the human population world-wide. The major target group of the parasite includes immunocompromised patients (e.g. AIDS, cancer, organ transplantation) and fetus bearing pregnant women where it develops toxoplasmic encephalitis, myocarditis, chorioretinitis and abnormal fetal brain development or stillbirths respectively. In this review, we have presented the current status of T. gondii infection in livestock animals and human population in Bangladesh to assess the country-wide relative risk. Al- though exact prevalence is difficult to predict due to the scarcity of data, nev- ertheless existing literature suggests that 16% - 39% humans and 8% - 70% domestic animals are infected with T. gondii, which implies Bangladeshi population is at high risk of toxoplasmosis. Furthermore, we have proposed a potential area of research to decipher the genetic diversity and transmission routes of T. gondii infection into Bangladeshi population. Keywords Toxoplasma gondii, Seroprevalence, Livestock Animals, Humans, Bangladesh 1. Introduction Toxoplasma gondii is an important zoonotic protozoan parasite that can infect any warm blooded animals including humans and causes toxoplasmosis [1]. T. gondii belongs to the group of phylum Apicomplexa that was first identified in African rodent “Ctenodactylus gundii” in 1908 by Nicolle and Manceaux at Pas- teur institute of Tunis. T. gondii is widely distributed in nature and therefore in- How to cite this paper: Rahman, T., Rah- man, A. and Chakraborty, S. (2018) Infection of Toxoplasma gondii in Humans and Lives- tock Animals: An Emerging Silent Threat for Bangladesh. Open Journal of Medical Micro- biology, 8, 109-117. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojmm.2018.84010 Received: September 12, 2018 Accepted: November 5, 2018 Published: November 21, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access