Talk:African trypanosomiasis

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External Review

The following comments from external reviewer BSW-JMH are in conjunction with the joint Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project.

Hello African trypanosomiasis writers and editors. The article has been give a Class B rating on the WikiProject Medicine quality scale. The article is, for the most part, complete and has appropriate references. As part of my review, I have made some minor changes in the text to enhance the clarity and flow of the article. Further, I have detailed some suggestions below that I hope are helpful to further enhance the scope of the article.

Introductory Section

Nicely written and a good lead into the article. I also like the image and info box. I changed the last sentence to include more specific information about the previous epidemics, using ref #3 (^ WHO Media centre (2006). Fact sheet N°259: African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness). This reference should be added, in addition to ref #4 (^ a b c "Uganda: Sleeping Sickness Reaching Alarming Levels," New Vision, May 11, 2008.) to the last sentence. Also Google Health has a nice page that could be added to the references here. https://health.google.com/health/ref/Sleeping+sickness

Signs and symptoms

This heading could be simplified to, "Symptoms" or be made more specific, "Disease stages and symptoms". I smoothed out the text in this section a bit, just to make it easier to read. However, some citation is needed for the main section dealing with symptoms and disease progression. The Winterbottom's sign article does not have an image, so an image added to that page and/or to this page would be quite dramatic. These is some discussion about whether peer-reviewed journal articles should be used as citations, since many of these articles would not be available to the general public; however, for references 5 and 6 (^ Olowe SA (1975). "A case of congenital trypanosomiasis in Lagos". Trans. R. Soc. Trop. Med. Hyg. 69 (1): 57–9. doi:10.1016/0035-9203(75)90011-5. PMID 1170654. ^ Rocha G, Martins A, Gama G, Brandão F, Atouguia J (January 2004). "Possible cases of sexual and congenital transmission of sleeping sickness". Lancet 363 (9404): 247. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(03)15345-7. PMID 14738812. ), given that these cite specific types of transmission, I like that the supporting information is included.

Trypanosome life cycle

Minor changes were made to smooth out the text. A link to the Trypanosome article could be included here.

Diagnosis

The text here was simplifed and technical words/phrases were replaced with common language and the section was rearranged a little to improve flow.

Other suggestions: The figure legend is very technical and should be simplified. Description of the trypanosome form should be replaced with a link to the Trypanosome article.

Some detail about what/why Giesma is used to stain smears.

The details on preparing the slides could be made into a seperate section and more detail on this given. This does not directly pertain to diagnosis, but rather microbiology methods to detect trypanosomes in samples. A seperate section would enable persons interested in detailed methods to find the information and allow those who do not need this information to easily skip it.

Information about the manufacturers of the serological tests would be useful.

Prevention

This section was revised for clarity. Suggestion: a more detailed explanation of the insecticies and methods to reduce the tsetse fly population would be a nice addition. Is the term "gambinese disease" clear, or should it be changed to "infection with T. gambinese..." If there are references to specific groups that do community-based screening, it would be good to have an external reference to this.

Treatment

Here are a few suggestions that might be useful to enhance this section.

Simplify the alternatives and make it more clear that both Eflornithine and melarsoprol are alternative drugs that are no longer or rarely used. Perhaps a short description of why administration of these drugs is so labor intensive.

If possible, place external links to the manufacturer of these drugs. References 6 and 10 are contradictory.

Epidemology

Minor changes were made. The following sentence is out of place in this section. Can it be moved to another section or a seperate paragraph be made and this idea expanded upon. According to recent estimates, the disability adjusted life years (9 to 10 years) (DALYs) lost due to sleeping sickness are 2.0 million.

History

This section was well written; however, citations are needed throughout this section. Also, this is primarily a history of treatments for sleeping sickness. This would be a good section to detail information about the epidemics. Also, this section should be moved to earlier in the article.

Research

Minor changes were made. New developments should be added as necessary

External links

The CDC and WHO has several pages that would be useful links. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/trypanosomiasis/default.htm http://apps.who.int/tdr/svc/diseases/african-trypanosomiasis —Preceding unsigned comment added by BSW-JMH (talk • contribs) 04:23, 20 May 2010 (UTC) Overall this article looks good. Addition of a little more detail to these sections and reducing the jargon and technical language should help improve the article's grade. BSW-JMH (talk) 04:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

References

Sections

Should section headings such as epidemiolgy and treatment be added to this article? --McDogm 15:04, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I, like, totally think so, Sugar!-Marrymary888

Definitely, I thinkk that everybody should be able to learn all about bad things like this. We all should be prepared for the rough breaks in life. -Krista-

Timeline

What's the typical timeline, from infection to neurological phase to death? --Itinerant1 (talk) 09:14, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Geographic distribution and epidemiology

Is it possible that the graphic of the map is not correct? If I understand the data linked there ([1]) correctly the maximum death rate by trypanosomiasis is rather 16 than 160. Do I understand the data wrong or is there a mistake in the picture? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.142.191.15 (talk) 18:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Human disease not animal

This article is about the Human disease, not both.I reverted the changes that made the introduction about both, as this is confusing that all the following information is about only HAT, and AAT is in a different article that is not mentioned in the introduction. The reversion makes it clear this is about trypanosomiasis in humans, and the animal version is discussed in the other article. 2601:648:8503:4467:89A1:456C:6C8:9BC1 (talk) 00:24, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

It is about both. We have a sentence in the lead that says "Other animals, such as cows, may carry the disease and become infected in which case it is known as Nagana or animal trypanosomiasis." and we have a section on "other animals". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:12, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Symptoms, transmission, diagnosis, treatment, all the information in most sections is about human. That sentence is to direct readers to the animal article. If this is about both, and there is a separate article about AAT, there should be a separate article about HAT, but even the disambiguation page, gives this as the human article and the other as the animal. If this is both, almost all of the article needs rewritten to accommodate both, as almost 100% of the different sections is entirely about human. But, I think that no one wants an outsider editing these articles. You know, large sections of the parasite articles on Wikipedia are confusing (this about both according to lead, only about humans in most sections, separate article about AAT), plagiarized (some from my own writings, thanks for taking but not letting me write), and seriously outdated with major omissions. Please note all the other sections that they are only about human. 2601:648:8503:4467:89A1:456C:6C8:9BC1 (talk) 03:38, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The article about HAT would be easy to write, just omit two sentences and copy and paste this into it. 2601:648:8503:4467:89A1:456C:6C8:9BC1 (talk) 03:40, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

This is how we format articles about diseases per WP:MEDMOS.

We generally emphasize the human aspects of the condition and than have a section in the article for "other animals". If that section becomes large we than create a sub article. Unless of course the disease is primarily in other animals but not people.

We are not going to divide pneumonia into "pneumonia in humans" and "pneumonia in other animals" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:59, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

There is an article on Animal trypanosomiasis. It is not the equivalent of "pneumonia in other animals," there are not dozens of countries with research and government institutes funded for billions of dollars and hundreds of books written on "pneumonia in other animals." 2600:387:6:805:0:0:0:65 (talk) 23:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

That article could definitely be improved. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:17, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

You just told me l couldn't because, after all a major multi-billion dollar animal disease that has dictated the history of a continent and has hundreds, if not thousands of books written on it, and fully funded agencies to deal with it in dozens of countries, is the same as pigs having pneumonia, so you reverted my attempt to direct people to that article, chastised me here for even thinking I could edit when I attempted to clarify the focus of this one, and told me I couldn't expand that one, because, instead, I had to expand this one to include sections on animal herd testing as an aside in human testing. Sure, it's just the same, because human herd testing and monitoring is a highly funded aspect of sleeping sickness.

Does anyone ever let someone new edit this article or does everyone guarding the outdated and hugely plagiarized parasitology articles on Wikipedia just see new editors as an opportunity to smugly throw out rules and revert anything they add?

Rhetorical! ;) 2601:648:8503:4467:C59C:546D:40B3:CBB3 (talk) 11:59, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Up to you. But this article is only a couple of paragraphs.Animal_trypanosomiasisDoc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:08, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

That's what I was trying to do expand that one, starting with directing people there, and you reverted me, lectured me about a policy I can't find, and one that is ridiculous in this case. Now you're saying what, that I have your official permission to edit your article and expand the animal one against strict but hidden rules about pig pneumonia? I wondered why so much plagiarism sits in so many Wikipedia Parasitology articles, but I see that these barriers to editing, being reverted, lectured on rules that can't be found, and are ridiculous, then told to go ahead and do what I was being lectured not to do, just chase people away.

Are you going to revert me again? 2600:387:6:805:0:0:0:C4 (talk) 02:07, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Mechanism?

The section on mechanism seems to indicate that the way the organism causes damage is the production of tryptophal or am I misinterpreting? Is the eventual cause of death, for example, due to the presence of this chemical or that this chemical simply how the disease cause sleep? I think this could be clarified.--Jrm2007 (talk) 07:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Lancet

doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31510-6 JFW | T@lk 11:09, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Main topic for "sleeping sickness

User:Wbm1058 IMO sleeping sickness should at least redirect here with the current sleeping sickness page be coming a disambig. Your thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:10, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

At 17:24, 2 January 2009‎ Arcadian moved Sleeping sickness to African trypanosomiasis over redirect: dab

So this is potentially controversial as another editor thought the term was ambiguous. I'm not an expert on this, and haven't analyzed usage of the term, so I don't really know whether this is the primary topic.

Personally I'd start a requested move discussion, but if you want to boldly reverse Arcadian I won't object. wbm1058 (talk) 01:29, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good. I have adjusted. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:32, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Epidemiology discrepancy

The epidemiology section seems to contradict itself. It starts out by strongly suggesting that the number of deaths due to HAT is declining significantly, way down from 34 000 in 1991 to 9000 in 2010. Then the second paragraph claims 48 000 deaths in 2008. If there really was a spike that large I would expect it to be explained, or real numbers harmonised with the text. --Craig (t|c) 11:14, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Fix the table in Epidemiology

its too big to the point where it scrolls off the page, additionally it would probably be a good idea to merge countries that dont go into the triple digits into an "Other African countries" row as imo their too minor to be taking up so much space Tauin (talk) 17:43, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

edit: heres a quick edit that i did to show what i mean (NOTE: i havent added the "Other African Countries" row yet) https://i.imgur.com/DPayxKv.png Tauin (talk) 17:57, 23 June 2022 (UTC)