Demanding of Lassa Fever: Reducing Its Risk as an Infectious Disease

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullahi Aborode Tunde
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Lassa Fever

scholarly journals Demanding of Lassa Fever: Reducing its Risk as an Infectious Disease

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullahi Tunde Aborode ◽  
Victor Adegbile Adesewa ◽  
Oni Ebenezer Ayomide ◽  
Samuel Ogunsola Olarenwaju
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Lassa Fever ◽  
West African ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
The World ◽  
Lassa Fever Virus ◽  
Imported Cases ◽  
Proactive Measures ◽  
And Control

In recent years, Lassa fever has been announced as an infectious disease in the world, a few imported cases have been accounted for in various pieces of the world and there are developing worries of the possibilities of Lassa fever Virus as an organic weapon. Regardless of its assaulting impact, no substantial arrangement has been created to reduce the hazard of the ailment, about a large portion of 10 years after identifying it. A Review based on the documents from the literature search on PubMed, Scopus, Goggle Scholar and Science direct. Out of these, the final 16 articles that met the criteria were selected. Relevant information on epidemiology, the burden of management and control were obtained. Timely and effective containment of the Lassa fever disease in Lassa village four decades ago could have minimized the devastating effect and threats posed by this illness in the West African sub-region and indeed the entire globe. That was a hard lesson calling for much more proactive measures towards the eradication of the illness at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of health care. Hence, the paper is aimed at appraising the threats associated with Lassa fever disease; its demands on curtailing the menace of the epidemic, and recommendations on important focal points.

scholarly journals Quantifying the seasonal drivers of transmission for Lassa fever in Nigeria

2019 ◽  
Vol 374 (1775) ◽  
pp. 20180268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei R. Akhmetzhanov ◽  
Yusuke Asai ◽  
Hiroshi Nishiura
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Case Fatality ◽  
Lassa Fever ◽  
Transmission Dynamics ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
High Exposure ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Lassa fever (LF) is a zoonotic disease that is widespread in West Africa and involves animal-to-human and human-to-human transmission. Animal-to-human transmission occurs upon exposure to rodent excreta and secretions, i.e. urine and saliva, and human-to-human transmission occurs via the bodily fluids of an infected person. To elucidate the seasonal drivers of LF epidemics, we employed a mathematical model to analyse the datasets of human infection, rodent population dynamics and climatological variations and capture the underlying transmission dynamics. The surveillance-based incidence data of human cases in Nigeria were explored, and moreover, a mathematical model was used for describing the transmission dynamics of LF in rodent populations. While quantifying the case fatality risk and the rate of exposure of humans to animals, we explicitly estimated the corresponding contact rate of humans with infected rodents, accounting for the seasonal population dynamics of rodents. Our findings reveal that seasonal migratory dynamics of rodents play a key role in regulating the cyclical pattern of LF epidemics. The estimated timing of high exposure of humans to animals coincides with the time shortly after the start of the dry season and can be associated with the breeding season of rodents in Nigeria. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: approaches and important themes’. This issue is linked with the subsequent theme issue ‘Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: epidemic forecasting and control’.

scholarly journals New methodologies for the estimation of population vulnerability to diseases: a case study of Lassa fever and Ebola in Nigeria and Sierra Leone

2019 ◽  
Vol 374 (1776) ◽  
pp. 20180265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olumayowa Kajero ◽  
Victor Del Rio Vilas ◽  
James L. N. Wood ◽  
Giovanni Lo Iacono
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Lassa Fever ◽  
High Morbidity ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
The Impact

Public health practitioners require measures to evaluate how vulnerable populations are to diseases, especially for zoonoses (i.e. diseases transmitted from animals to humans) given their pandemic potential. These measures would be valuable to support strategic and operational decision making and allocation of resources. Although vulnerability is well defined for natural hazards, for public health threats the concept remains undetermined. Here, we develop new methodologies to: (i) quantify the impact of zoonotic diseases and the capacity of countries to cope with these diseases, and (ii) combine these two measures (impact and capacity) into one overall vulnerability indicator. The adaptive capacity is calculated from estimations of disease mortality, although the method can be adapted for diseases with no or low mortality but high morbidity. As an example, we focused on the vulnerability of Nigeria and Sierra Leone to Lassa Fever and Ebola. We develop a simple analytical form that can be used to estimate vulnerability scores for different spatial units of interest, e.g. countries or regions. We show how some populations can be highly vulnerable despite low impact threats. We finally outline future research to more comprehensively inform vulnerability with the incorporation of relevant factors depicting local heterogeneities (e.g. bio-physical and socio-economic factors). This article is part of the theme issue ‘Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: epidemic forecasting and control’. This theme issue is linked with the earlier issue ‘Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: approaches and important themes’.

scholarly journals Infectious Diseases Seeker (IDS): An Innovative Tool for Prompt Identification of Infectious Diseases during Outbreaks

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 3216
Author(s):  
Federico Baldassi ◽  
Mariachiara Carestia ◽  
Stefania Moramarco ◽  
Andrea Malizia ◽  
Pasquale Gaudio
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Unknown Origin ◽  
High Sensitivity ◽  
Lassa Fever ◽  
Outbreak Detection ◽  
Outbreak Management ◽  
Epidemic Intelligence ◽  
Innovative Tool

Background: Several technologies for rapid molecular identification of pathogens are currently available; jointly with monitoring tools (i.e., web-based surveillance tools, infectious diseases modelers, and epidemic intelligence methods), they represent important components for timely outbreak detection and identification of the involved pathogen. The application of these approaches is usually feasible and effective when performed by healthcare professionals with specific expertise and skills and when data and resources are easily accessible. Contrariwise, in the field situation where healthcare workers or first responders from heterogeneous competences can be asked to investigate an outbreak of unknown origin, a simple and suitable tool for rapid agent identification and appropriate outbreak management is highly needed. Most especially when time is limited, available data are incomplete, and accessible infrastructure and resources are inadequate. The use of a prompt, user-friendly, and accessible tool able to rapidly recognize an infectious disease outbreak and with high sensitivity and precision may be a game-changer to support emergency response and public health investigations. Methods: This paper presents the work performed to implement and test an innovative tool for prompt identification of infectious diseases during outbreaks, called Infectious Diseases Seeker (IDS). IDS is a standalone software that runs on the most common operative systems. It has been built by integrating a database containing an interim set of 60 different disease causative agents and COVID-19 data and is able to work in an off-line mode without requiring a network connection. Results: IDS has been applied in a real and complex scenario in terms of concomitant infectious diseases (yellow fever, COVID-19, and Lassa fever), as can be in the second part of 2020 in Nigeria. The outcomes have allowed inferring that yellow fever (YF), and not Lassa fever, was affecting the area under investigation. Conclusions: Our result suggests that a tool like IDS could be valuable for the quick and easy identification and discrimination of infectious disease outbreaks even when concurrent outbreaks occur, like for the case study of YF and COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.

Tissue section lifting for electron microscopy

1978 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-87
Author(s):  
Adrian F. van Dellen
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Tissue Culture ◽  
Organ System ◽  
Surrounding Tissue ◽  
Paraffin Sections ◽  
Surface Areas ◽  
Specific Determination ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Accuracy And Repeatability

The morphologic pathologist may require information on the ultrastructure of a non-specific lesion seen under the light microscope before he can make a specific determination. Such lesions, when caused by infectious disease agents, may be sparsely distributed in any organ system. Tissue culture systems, too, may only have widely dispersed foci suitable for ultrastructural study. In these situations, when only a few, small foci in large tissue areas are useful for electron microscopy, it is advantageous to employ a methodology which rapidly selects a single tissue focus that is expected to yield beneficial ultrastructural data from amongst the surrounding tissue. This is in essence what "LIFTING" accomplishes. We have developed LIFTING to a high degree of accuracy and repeatability utilizing the Microlift (Fig 1), and have successfully applied it to tissue culture monolayers, histologic paraffin sections, and tissue blocks with large surface areas that had been initially fixed for either light or electron microscopy.

Indian vultures: victims of an infectious disease epidemic?

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. A. Cunningham ◽  
V. Prakash ◽  
D. Pain ◽  
G. R. Ghalsasi ◽  
G. A. H. Wells ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease

Experts List Top Articles in Infectious Disease

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
SHERRY BOSCHERT
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease

Looking Ahead in Infectious Disease

2005 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
MARY ANNE JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease
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