Confused on pathogen vs. disease pages, if indeed health sciences has gone away

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

When I started with Select Agent Program as a taxonomy of hazardous pathogens, I soon realized that there was a lack of consistency about what went into the article about a disease, and about the article about the pathogen of the disease. I also realized there was a need to have consistency in referencing to biohazard lists, such as CDC Disease-Agent list.

I have set up the page  anthrax essentially as an outline, and would greatly appreciate help in working out some standard splits of topics between the pathogen and disease page.

At the moment, Bacillus anthracis is hard to follow, giving due regard to the differences that will have to exist among articles on bacterial, viral, fungal, protozoal, and even prion pathogens. Perhaps the pair of anthrax and B. anthracis may serve as a testbed.

[David E. Volk]

Howard, I had tried to get help with a standard format for this issue earlier, and received few or no replies, ie [[West Nile virus]] vs. [[Dengue]]. For Dengue virus there is the virus, Dengue fever, Dengue hemorrhagic fever and Dengue shock syndrome.  Do we really want 4 articles or just one article under the virus name?  For others, like Shingles, should this go under the virus together with chicken-pox or a separate article?

At present, I am in favor of having the word virus in the name of the articles dealing with the virus and its molecular biology, structure, category A,B,C listing, etc, and seperate articles for West Nile fever, Dengue fever, etc, in which all medical aspects are listed. The alternative is West Nile (fever) and West Nile (virus).  For many viruses, the name comes from a city or location, which would need another disambig listing.

But, like I said, little input has been received so far.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Howard, I had tried to get help with a standard format for this issue earlier, and received few or no replies, ie [[West Nile virus]] vs. [[Dengue]]. For Dengue virus there is the virus, Dengue fever, Dengue hemorrhagic fever and Dengue shock syndrome.  Do we really want 4 articles or just one article under the virus name?  For others, like Shingles, should this go under the virus together with chicken-pox or a separate article?

At present, I am in favor of having the word virus in the name of the articles dealing with the virus and its molecular biology, structure, category A,B,C listing, etc, and seperate articles for West Nile fever, Dengue fever, etc, in which all medical aspects are listed. The alternative is West Nile (fever) and West Nile (virus).  For many viruses, the name comes from a city or location, which would need another disambig listing.

But, like I said, little input has been received so far.

I share your frustration. There's a lack of consistency even internal to the Select Agent Program list.

In my sandbox, I'm experimenting with pathogen vs. disease http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Howard_C._Berkowitz/Q_fever http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Howard_C._Berkowitz/Coxiella_burnetii

Feel free to hack at them.

Subconsciously, I may have avoided a viral disease, for exactly the additional problems with "foo" virus, "foo virus", and the "bar (place name) variant of foo virus."  :-<  Are you familiar with the politics before a particular hantavirus was named "Sin Nombre"?

Should the entry be "Ebola" or "Ebola virus", let alone "Ebola fever"? AFAIK, Ebola is always hemorrhagic, while dengue may not be.

[Matt Innis]

Have you guys checked with Dr. Badgett?  He seems to at least have a plan for article naming.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Robert_Badgett

[David E. Volk]

Yes, Robert and I tried, a little bit, to come some understanding.  You will note that Robert started [[ Dengue fever ]], which is really caused by four different Dengue viruses (and many strains of each), while my initial try was [[ West Nile virus ]], in which I placed the article under the virus name.

If I had a magical wand, I would name all such articles for the virus, describing its evolution, biology, structure, disease manifestations, control, vaccines, etc., and the article "foo" fever would either be a redirect to the virus page, which also describes the disease it causes, or the "foo" fever article would be a one paragraph intro stating see [[ "foo" fever virus ]] for more information.  To me, the fever, hemhorrage and shock syndrom are each an aspect of the virus.  To the physician, however, it is the main deal.  Then what to do with information regarding sylvatic (jungle) strains?

[Matt Innis]

Can we not have both articles, [[Denge Fever]] and [[West Nile virus]] with two separate contents, each wikilinking to the other in the appropriate places?  In other words, the west nile virus article would describe the virus, its origin/structure, transmission and conditions it causes -  here we put a link to denge fever which explains all the signs and symptoms of denge fever as well as a link the the 3 or 4 known pathogens that cause it (one of which is [[west nile virus]].

Am I making sense?

[Chris Day]

With out really looking into this yet, my first impression is that a disease article should be about symptoms mentioning the pathogens.  But we need to have articles on the pathogens themselves too.

[Joe Quick]

Yes, I think it would be beneficial to have both.

As a non-expert (and far from it) on these matters, I would want to be able to read an article about the different sorts of diseases that I might get.  I would expect symptoms, risk factors, et cetera.  The problem with having only disease articles is that more than one pathogen could be the cause so the articles could get really long.

There is also a lot of information regarding pathogens that doesn't really belong in an article about the maladies they cause -- evolution, structure and so on.  But we don't want only pathogen articles, because (again) exposure to more than one could result in the same malady and we want people to be able to find articles telling them about their gross red spots.

So I would do both.  Articles about diseases would focus mainly on the symptoms, risk factors, treatments,... and articles about pathogens would focus on structure, evolution, strains,...  Of course, disease articles would provide links to the sorts of things that can cause them and pathogen articles would link to articles about their manifestations.

[David E. Volk]

Matt, you are bit confused, but that is my fault.  West Nile virus causes West Nile fever, not Dengue fever, and Dengue viruses 1-4 cause Dengue (aka "breakbone") fever.  Dengue and WNV were mentioned together as the only two examples we had at one point, each from a different view (fever vs pathogen).

This is the sort of subject that should be covered in the ... you guessed it ... Health Sciences Styleguide!
I really do need to get my proposal to the EC.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

To look at what might go into pathogen vs. disease, I offer an attempt: Coxiella burnetii and Q fever.  These are evolutions from a pathogen and a disease outline in my userspace, which I haven't yet edited to deal with what I learned in writing the two articles. A certain amount of overlap is necessary, and I'll admit I did a certain amount of cut-and-paste, but, at least in a first try, there's a difference in emphasis. In the pathogen article, there's detail about taxonomy of the organism, laboratory techniques not strictly relevant to diagnosis, etc.  Unique things in the disease article would include differential diagnosis, treatment, and sequelae.

Things that tend to be overlapping include the geographic distribution of the organism and the reservoiir. Since Q fever tends to present as pneumonia in North America but as hepatitis in Europe, it's not the best example. It's relevant to the pathogen that it produces type1 and type 2 antigen, but, in the disease article, the emphasis is that the different antigen-antibody reactions are correlated with acute vs. chronic disease states.