Pet in the home

Pregnant women are often advised not to clean cat litter boxes and to avoid sick cats. The risk of acquiring toxoplasmosis is the reason for these warnings. A woman infected while pregnant may not even know she has toxoplasmosis, but she has a 50% chance of passing the infection on to her child. During the first trimester, an infant has a 17% chance of contracting toxoplasmosis from an infected mother. Estimated to range from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 8,000 births each year in the United States, babies born with the illness can have consequences such as blindness, hydrocephalus, jaundice, eye lesions, and neurological problems.