When you first discover that you're expecting a little bundle of joy, you try your hardest to do everything beneficial for maintaining a healthy pregnancy. One of the most important things you can do is to examine your lifestyle and your daily activities. Something as simple as changing your kitty's litter box or gardening may set the course for exposing you and your unborn baby to a potentially dangerous infection known as toxoplasmosis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by a single-celled parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii. This parasite infects birds, animals and humans. More than 60 million people in the United States may be infected with the parasite through various means of exposure.

"Human infection is acquired by consuming undercooked meat of infected animals, by insect contamination of food, by contact with feces of infected cats or by contact with infected materials or insects in soil," says Dr. Ibrahim Bildirici, a clinical fellow-instructor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the Washington University School of Medicine/Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Mo.

Of those who are infected, very few experience symptoms of the disease because a healthy person's immune system usually prevents the parasite from causing any illness. Symptoms of this disease may bear striking similarities to the flu: swollen glands, fatigue, fever and muscle aches. Unfortunately, for a pregnant woman, the risks of toxoplasmosis infection can have severe repercussions to her health and the health of her developing baby.

Routine screening tests for toxoplasmosis immunity are not currently required as a standard in the United States, thus making it nearly impossible to put a number on how many expectant women actually become infected with the disease. If a woman is planning to conceive, most specialists will agree that she should make a point to discuss undergoing an immunity-screening test with a primary caregiver if she may have been exposed to the infection. A blood test will then be performed, and if the results of the screening test reveal that a woman has not been previously infected with the toxoplasmosis virus, she is then at risk for an eventual exposure to the parasite and should take all the necessary precautions during the course of her pregnancy.

According to the March of Dimes, between one in 1,000 and one and 10,000 babies in the United States are born with toxoplasmosis each year. A developing baby's immune system has not had a chance to become mature enough to develop antibodies against infection.

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