Costa et al. BMC Public Health 2012, 12:73 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/73 religion, racial classification, studying, having a paid job, annual family income (US$), number of people living with the pregnant adolescent, first pregnancy, number of living children, gestational age at the first consulta- tion, first consultation of the prenatal assistance, results of the IgG and IgM serology for toxoplasmosis. The data was collected through a pre-codified and validated questionnaire. The research planning included a pilot study to define the most adequate way to collect the data in the selected services. Undergraduate students in the health care area were trained to identify and interview the study population. The pregnant adoles- cents was identified through the scheduled list of the initial laboratory tests or while waiting for prenatal assistance. Initially, she was invited to participate in the research and informed about the objectives and metho- dology of the study. After agreeing with it, the free and informed consent form was signed by the pregnant ado- lescent when older than 18 or by her parents or legal guardian when she was younger than 18. Then the researcher performed the interview and referred her for the serological test, in which the ELISA technique was used. The data was stored using the statistical package Epi Info 3.5.1 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC - Atlanta, Georgia, USA) and analyzed with the statistical package STATA® 11.0 (Stata Corp LP, College Station, TX 77845, USA). Chi square and Fischer’s Exact test were used to analyze the preventive behavior for toxoplasmosis in respect to the independent vari- ables. The differences were considered to be statistically significant with the significance level of 5%. The variable selection for the construction of the multivariate logistic regression model was based on the Stepwise process used to identify the possible variables that are predictors of preventive behavior. Adjusted odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated by multi- variate analysis using logistic regression. The research was approved by the Ethics and Research Committee of the University of Fortaleza under the No. 052/2008, according to the declaration of Helsinki. Results Of the 341 pregnant adolescents surveyed, 21 were excluded from the study - ten who participated in the pilot study, five who refused to participate, four who were not assisted by their parents or someone responsi- ble for them and two who gave up during the survey. Among the 320 pregnant adolescents who participated in the study only 12% were younger than 15 years of age; 60% were married; 66% declared a religion; racial classification of 76% was non-white, 58% did not study, and 11% had paid jobs. The annual family income varied between US$ 1,026.00 and US$ 102,600.00 and 65% of Page 3 of 8 the families of these pregnant girls received less than US $ 5,436.00. The number of people living with the preg- nant adolescent varied from one to 14 people with an average of 3.7 people. The distribution of pregnant adolescents assisted in the prenatal care in the primary healthcare according to sociodemographic variables of the study is presented in Table 1. The proportion of the pregnant adolescents according to the age group differs statistically regarding the marital status (p = 0.003) and religion (p = 0.010), while racial classification, studying, paid job, annual family income and number of people living with the pregnant adolescent do not differ between the two age groups. The adolescents ranged from 12 to 19 years of age. The distribution of pregnant adolescents assisted in the prenatal care in the primary healthcare according to biological characteristics and prenatal assistance vari- ables in the study, is presented in Table 1. The propor- tion of pregnant adolescents according to age group does not differ statistically regarding the biological char- acteristics and prenatal care assistance. The distribution of pregnant adolescents according to the first pregnancy shows that 84.4% of them are primigestous. The fre- quency of living children among the adolescents who already had one child increased between both age groups, being 5% in the age group between 12 and 14 years old and 17% in the age group from 15 to 19 years old. The first trimester of the gestational age to start the prenatal care decreased from 55.6% (95%CI 39.2-71.0) in the age group between 12 and 14 years old to 48.8% (95%CI 42.9-54.6) in the age group from 15 to 19 years old. The first prenatal consultation was more frequent among the pregnant adolescents whose age ranged from 12 to 14 years old, coexisting with the decrease of the number of consultations among the pregnant adoles- cents with the age from 15 to 19 years old. The number of consultations during prenatal care varied between one and 14 prenatal care consultations and an average of 2.5 consultations. The frequency of positive IgG increased from 44.4% (95%CI 26.8-63.2) in pregnant adolescents from 12 to 14 years old to 45.4% (95%CI 38.4-52.6) in pregnant adolescents from 15 to 19 years old. The presence of positive IgM increased from 0%, in pregnant adolescents from 12 to 14 years old to 2.7% (95%CI 0.9-5.6) in pregnant adolescents from 15 to 19 years old. Among 307 pregnant adolescents who were asked about preventive behavior for toxoplasmosis, we observed that 16.3% (50) of the pregnant adolescents showed pre- ventive behavior for toxoplasmosis and 83.7% (257) did not show this behavior. Among 50 pregnant adolescents who were asked about preventive behavior for toxoplas- mosis, 82.4% did not eat undercooked or partially cooked