Toxoplasmosis Diagnosis

If you have signs of toxoplasmosis, see your doctor. You also might want to talk with them about it if you want to get pregnant or you have a health problem that affects your immune system.

If you have the infection, your body will make things called antibodies to try to fight it off. To find out if you have toxoplasmosis, your doctor can do a blood test to see if you have those antibodies.

If you’ve been infected recently, your body may not have had time to make them. So even if your test doesn’t show any signs of them, your doctor may want to do another test a few weeks later to be sure.

If the blood test shows you do have the antibodies, you’re likely in for another test. The CDC recommends that a lab that specializes in toxoplasmosis test your blood sample again to make sure the result is correct. If so, more tests can be done on your blood to find out when the infection started.

If you have a serious illness such as encephalitis (a life-threatening brain infection), you may need imaging tests to check for cysts or lesions in your brain. These tests may include an MRI or a brain biopsy. With an MRI, you lie inside a machine that creates images of your brain and head using a magnetic field and radio waves. With a brain biopsy, a doctor takes a sample of brain tissue and has it checked for toxoplasmosis cysts.