Toxoplasmic Infection in Pregnant Women from Cluj County and Neighbouring Area

Toxoplasmosis is an antropozoonosis very frequent in population as a benign usually asymptomatic disease. The problems are raised by the congenital form of this disease that may occur if the women acquire the parasite during pregnancy leading to congenital toxoplasmosis. In order to prevent congenital toxoplasmosis many countries have screening programs design to diagnose the acute infection during fertile age of female population. Our prospective serologic study over a selected group of 510 pregnant women in Cluj county area showed a 39 % prevalence of toxoplasmic infection among women of fertile age, with a predominance of acute toxoplasmic infection during first trimester of pregnancy (66.66%), representing the predominant cause of abortion in our study group. Annual infection risk for female population aged 20-33 years old is K = 0.67% in our geographic area. A 4 % of cases had IgM persistence for more than 1-year period, and another 7% demonstrate positive IgM along with positive IgG raising the possibility of persistency to 11% of cases. We find out that half of women address laboratory by their own initiative and we calculate that medium age of pregnant women with toxoplasmic immunity (positive IgG) was 28 years old

Species richness — pond area relationships of amphibians and birds in two Natura 2000 protected areas of Romania

In this paper, we present regional differences in pond area by focusing on species — pond area relationships between two groups of vertebrates differing in life cycles and ecological requirements: amphibians and birds. The study was conducted in two regions of Romania: the Târnava Basin and the Fizeş Valley. Ponds from Târnava were more vegetated with emergent aquatic plants ( Phragmites australis and Typha sp.). The amphibian species richness in ponds was higher in Târnava than in Fizeş and, conversely, Fizeş contained a higher number of bird species. The diversity of the amphibian species is not related to pond area, however, there was a positive relationship in both regions between amphibian species richness and the percentage of emergent vegetation cover. Bird’s species richness, on the other hand, was positively related to both pond area and vegetation cover in Târnava whereas only to vegetation cover in Fizeş. The z values of the species-area relationship for amphibians were low in both regions and slightly negative in Târnava. In case of birds, the z value was larger in Târnava than in Fizeş, suggesting that the number of species increased more with pond area in Târnava than in Fizeş