Talk:Lassa fever

Prevention and the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory vs. USAMRIID
I have checked into what the National Lab in Winnipeg has published after an individual placed NML in the place of USAMRIID for the Vaccine research. I had originally included two reference to USAMRIID's work which had never been removed.


 * Geisbert TW, Jones S, Fritz EA, Jahrling P, et al. 2005 Development of a new vaccine for the prevention of lassa fever. PLOS MEDICINE 2 (6): 537-545 JUN 2005.


 * Preston, Richard. 2002 The Demon In The Freezer. Random House, Inc.

The second reference is a non-fiction book about smallpox, but it does give background about Peter Jahrling, a co-authour of the above article (reference).

I checked to be sure that the NML had not published anything on Lassa Vaccines. I was right. Here is a PDF listing of some of their selected publications: 

There are some interesting related topic however, worth looking into for those that are interested. I include them here:


 * Bastien,N., Trudel,M., and Simard,C. (1999) Complete protection of mice from respiratory syncytial virus infection following mucosal delivery of synthetic peptide vaccines Vaccine 17: 832-836. PubMed
 * Kang,C.Y., Luo,L., Wainberg,M.A., and Li,Y. (1999) Development of HIV/AIDS vaccine using chimeric gag-env virus-like particles Biol.Chem. 380: 353-364. PubMed
 * Weingartl,H., Czub,M., Czub,S., Neufeld,J., Marszal,P., Gren,J., Smith,G., Jones,S., Proulx,R., Deschambault,Y., Grudeski,E., Andonov,A., He,R., Li,Y., Copps,J., Grolla,A., Dick,D., Berry,J., Ganske,S., Manning,L., and Cao,J. (2004) Immunization with modified vaccinia virus Ankarabased recombinant vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome is associated with enhanced hepatitis in ferrets J.Virol. 78: 12672-12676. PubMed

Spread to UK, US, etc...
Can someone find a reference to back this up? I don't think this has happened at all yet, and will remove this paragraph unless someone points me to some literature... Thanks. http://www.vrtnieuws.net/nieuwsnet_master/versie2/nieuws/details/060722Lassagriep/index.shtml It's in Dutch, but basically is about a recent case of Lassa Fever in Frankfurt.

== Hey there,

I was reading The Deamon in the freezer, then looked up some stuff on smallpox, came across lassa stuff on the way. I do believe that there is Lassa vaccine developed by USAMRIID.

Comparison to Ebola
I removed this:

"Lassa fever is far more deadly than Ebola, though they share similar symptoms. Because Lassa is a very fast replicating and debilitating virus, the chances of a worldwide epidemic are small. Patients are far too weak to board a plane and spread it to other parts of the world."

It seems to be in contradiction of the listed mortality rates for Lassa and Ebola. Further, "Patients are far too weak to board a plane" doesn't make any sense. The virus (according to the article) has an incubation period of up to 21 days, a mortality rate of 1%, and is inaparent in 80% of cases. Finally, it's conjectural and missing a citation. icambron 04:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Medical Aspects: Prevention
I removed the line "Because this virus is so contagious, it has been classified as an NIAID Biodefense Category A Agent." from this section because the corresponding link (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/biodefenserelated/biodefense/documents/cata_overview.pdf) does not support the claim and in fact only contains one passing reference to Lassa regarding differentiating it from other viruses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.91.92.143 (talk) 16:54, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Similar to Ebola?
The article says that it is an arenavirus, like Ebola. The Ebola article says that Ebola is a filovirus. Shouldn't this be removed? Senor Cuete (talk) 18:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Lead should be simpler
Endemic (epidemiology) means that there is ongoing / sustained transmission or spread. Thus I propose we use "ongoing spread" in the lead instead of endemic to make our text more understandable to a general audience. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:54, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * "endemic" is wikilinked so someone with poor vocabulary can look it up by clicking on the word. There is no reason to write this down for such people. Wikipedia is an attempt at serious scholarship, not Readers Digest or the USA Today. Senor Cuete (talk) 14:46, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree "ongoing spread"  should be used in the lead--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * "Endemic" is actually the correct term for this. It seems to me that you shouldn't be writing this down, in poor English to cater to people you assume to be ignorant. Senor Cuete (talk) 15:31, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * This is the lead of the article. We are trying to write for a non technical audience. The technical audience does not need us as they have better sources.
 * A discussion of endemic-ness is not really even needed in the lead. The body of the article can be more complicated. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 00:15, 2 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree "endemic" is a little too arcane for a general audience, but don't think "ongoing spread" is clear enough (since it may imply the affected area is expanding, and I don't think the cited 2007 review says or implies that). NLM uses "constant presence" in it's MeSH definition, so we could say, "Lassa is constantly present in West Africa..." which is simple language but closer to the usual meaning of "endemic" as I understand it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks User:Anthonyhcole am happy with "constantly present" Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 06:29, 2 June 2015 (UTC)


 * "endemic" is NOT arcane at all. It's the correct vocabulary word for this. I bet it's found all over Wikipedia in similar articles. Anyone with a reasonable grasp of English would know it without having to click on the wikilinked word for the definition. This is a scientific article and of course it uses scientific vocabulary. I say again: There's no need to dumb-down an encyclopedia article to aim it at the ignorant. Senor Cuete (talk) 13:29, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

My dictionary defines "endemic" as: adjective 1 (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area: areas where malaria is endemic | complacency is endemic in industry today. Isn't this exactly what the article is trying to say? Isn't "endemic" the correct vocabulary word for "endemic"? Senor Cuete (talk) 13:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Search Wikipedia for articles containing the word "endemic". If you don't like this word in Wikipedia, you have a big battle ahead of you. There are 51,882 hits. Senor Cuete (talk) 13:41, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Making sure the lead is simpler is different from making sure the entire are is simpler.
 * Have replaced it with "regularly found" per your dictionary which is more or less the same as "ongoing spread" Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 14:53, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm happy with "regularly found". --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * If we want to talk about precision, the "regularly found" implies periodicity (e.g., seasonality). If it's not seasonal, then "always" or "constantly" might be better.  Also, if you want Simple(r) English, then you should avoid passive verbs.  "The Lassa virus frequently infects people in West Africa" or "Healthcare workers often diagnose Lassa fever in West Africa" use active verbs, while "Lassa is regularly found in West Africa" is passive.
 * I think it would be interesting to have a list of words (ideally even a list of health-related words) by education level, so that . I wonder whether User:Bluerasberry could find such a list.  There are some general lists, like this list of 3000 familiar words, but usually the readability formulae care about the number of syllables, rather than the actual likelihood of a word being known and understood, which means that endemic, which many readers (especially English-language learners) won't know, is considered to be "easier to read" than regularly, which even young children know.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:28, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I sort of caused some tension at simple:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject over the idea to post some simplified word lists over there. I also am talking with some people in the Simple English for health business about posting their word lists to Wikipedia. I cannot promise anything anytime soon but I continue to think about getting word lists of this sort into Wikimedia projects for health. When I have something I will post to WP:MED and elsewhere - hopefully before September. 11:15, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

There's no mandate on Wikipedia a to dumb the articles down for those who are educationally or English language-challenged, such as "English-language learners" or "children". In fact the purpose of a dictionary is the opposite: to educate people, bringing their level of education up. Who gave you the mandate to write Wikipedia down to some low level of education? What are you thinking? There's already a second such version: simple:wikipedia. If you are interested in creating low-quality watered-down content why don't you edit that? And let me say again, other editors didn't think that the word "endemic" was arcane. they used it 51,882 times. Shame on you. Senor Cuete (talk) 23:27, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Have a read of Make_technical_articles_understandable. Consensus at WP:MED is to have the leads of article be of a reasonable reading level. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 02:00, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Doc James - Have just linked indigenous and wondered why that word is acceptable but endemic (on a par with indigenous) is not.?  Would also say that I am in agreement with Senor Cuete's views on this oversimplification.  There also seems to be no rhyme nor reason for the acceptance or rejection of words. And its certainly not consistent over other Medical pages. Who has been given the mandate to decide what word is understandable to the general reader? The guidelines state that plain English be used over jargon  and to make the lead understandable - surely in terms of technicalities not in ordinary English words common to most people's vocabularies.  Who decides and how, that a word needs to be made understandable? There's an example on another page of 'larvae' being substituted for the 'young form of the tapeworm'. which is completely erroneous and which is one step away from referring to them as their babies. Please stop the rot. --Iztwoz (talk) 19:33, 9 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Iztwoz - "Who has been given the mandate to decide what word is understandable to the general reader?" a mutual admiration society[] apparently has discussed this, decided that they have reached a consensus and that the lead section of Wikipedia articles will be written for "English-language learners" or "children". Once these guys have standardized a policy like this they claim that there's no more arguing. Too bad for those of us who believe that we are participating in a scholarly endeavor. Senor Cuete (talk) 21:33, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Taking easier text and making it more complicated for the sack of having it be more complicated it not the way to go.
 * It is like taking well referenced text on Wikipedia and removing the references "because Wikipedia has other unreferenced text" Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 00:39, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Copyright issues
I have reverted these edits due to some potential copyright problems.

Specifically "In health-care settings, staff should always apply standard infection prevention and control precautions when caring for patients, regardless of their presumed diagnosis. These include basic hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, use of personal protective equipment (to block splashes or other contact with infected materials)" from http://www.sterlinghealthmcs.com/index.php/blog0/item/894-lassa-fever

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:30, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Treatment with blood plasma
If there are good sources, we should add that treatment with blood plasma from some recovered from lassa fever has been more effective than ribavirin. 85.226.183.45 (talk) 19:24, 20 April 2024 (UTC)