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The WikiJournal of Medicine is an open access, free-to-publish Wikipedia-integrated journal devoted to medicine and biomedicine. It is part of the larger WikiJournal publishing group. Its function is to put articles through academic peer review for stable, citable versions, whose content can potentially benefit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
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VOLUME 6 (2019)
ISSUE 1
Current issue
Author: Jouko Tuomisto
Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds comprise a group of chemicals including polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDD) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF), as well as certain dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (dl-PCB), and potentially others. They act via a common mechanism, stimulation of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AH receptor, AHR), a vital transcription factor in cells. There are very high differences in potency among these compounds, i.e. in the ability to stimulate the receptor. This leads to ten thousand fold or higher differences in doses causing similar toxic effects. Most of these compounds are eliminated very slowly in the environment, animals, or humans, which makes them persistent. They are much more soluble in fat than in water, and therefore they tend to accumulate in lipid or fatty tissues, and concentrate along the food web (bioaccumulation and biomagnification).
Authors: Aleksandar Brezar , James Heilman
Objective and design: To assess the readability of the leads of the twenty-five most accessed English medical articles on Wikipedia at 0, 1, 5 and 10 years ago. Following excerpting the leads and removing mark-up, an online tool was used to assign a score to the readability of each text sample. Conclusions: The average reading grade of articles on diseases in 2018 was 12.7 (95% CI = 12.1-13.4), which was significantly easier than in 2013 and 2008 (p<0.0001). Well the average readability of English Wikipedia’s medical pages has improved as of 2018 when compared to previous years, they often remains written at a level above the reading ability of average adults
Authors: Salma Rehman , Gloria Likupe , Roger Watson
Older people with dementia gradually lose their self-care abilities as the condition of dementia progresses and this includes the ability to eat independently. Recently there have been several systematic reviews with different conclusions about the effectiveness of these interventions. This systematic review of systematic reviews included MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsychINFO, Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), the Cochrane Library and the Joanna Briggs Library) searched between January 2005-December 2018 using the search strategy: (feeding OR mealtimes OR eating OR intake OR food and drink OR nutrition OR difficulty) AND dementia AND intervention AND systematic review, evaluated using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist. There is no strong evidence to support the use of any particular intervention for the alleviation of mealtime difficulties in older people with dementia. Methodological problems related to sample size and bias were apparent in the studies included in all the reviews and there was a lack of standardisation around interventions and outcomes across studies. Behavioural intervention, specifically Montessori education and spaced retrieval methods were considered promising and worthy of further research.
Author: Ozzie Anis , et al.
Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulty learning to read and spell. Underlying deficits typically include impaired phonological awareness (an awareness of the sound structure of words) and processing; difficulty with verbal working memory; and slow verbal processing speed. Observable problems include frequent spelling errors that same-age children do not exhibit; difficulty learning how to decode individual words, including "sounding out" words; and struggling to pronounce words correctly and fluently when reading aloud. Deficits in reading comprehension often occur as a secondary consequence.
Author: Kholhring Lalchhandama , et al.
Orientia tsutsugamushi is a mite-borne bacterium belonging to the family Rickettsiaceae and is responsible for the disease scrub typhus in humans. It is an obligate intracellular parasite of trombiculid mites, in which natural transmission is maintained from the female to its eggs (transovarial transmission) and from the eggs to adults (transstadial transmission). With a genome of only 2.0–2.7 Mb, it has the most repeated DNA sequences among bacteria. It is transmitted by mite larvae (chiggers) from rodents, the natural hosts of mites, to humans through accidental bites. Naosuke Hayashi first described it in 1920, giving it the name Theileria tsutsugamushi, but it was renamed to Orientia tsutsugamushi in 1995, owing to its unique properties.
Author: Ozzie Anis , et al.
Hepatitis E is inflammation of the liver caused by infection with the hepatitis E virus. It is one of five known human hepatitis viruses: A, B, C, D, and E. HEV is a positive-sense, single-stranded, nonenveloped, RNA icosahedral virus. HEV has mainly a fecal-oral transmission route. Infection with this virus was first documented in 1955 during an outbreak in New Delhi, India. A preventive vaccine (HEV 239) is approved for use in China.
Author: Abdulmutalab Musa
Lassa fever is a viral hemorrhagic fever caused by Lassa virus. Infection with this virus may be followed by a spectrum of symptoms varies from mild acute febrile illness of brief duration to a prolonged fatal disease with severe toxaemia, capillary leakage, hemorrhagic phenomena, shock and dysfunction of organ systems. Establishing a clinical diagnosis at an early stage is especially important because of the transmissibility of infection from person to person and the need for effective isolation of the patient and for containment of potentially infectious specimens during virological and clinical testing.
Author: Ozzie Anis , et al.
The Western African Ebola virus epidemic (2013–2016) was the most widespread outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in history—causing major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in the countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The first cases were recorded in Guinea in December 2013; later, the disease spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, while the rate among hospitalized patients was 57–59%, the final numbers 28,616 people, including 11,310 deaths, for a case-fatality rate of 40%. Small outbreaks occurred in Nigeria and Mali, and isolated cases were recorded in Senegal, the United Kingdom and Italy. In addition, imported cases led to secondary infection of medical workers in the United States and Spain but did not spread further. The number of cases peaked in October 2014 and then began to decline gradually, following the commitment of substantial international resources. As of 8 May 2016[update]World Health Organization (WHO) and respective governments reported a total of 28,616 suspected cases and 11,310 deaths (39.5%), though the WHO believes that this substantially understates the magnitude of the outbreak.
VOLUME 5 (2018)
ISSUE 1
Previous issue
Authors: Alison Cheong, Sean McGrath, Suzanne Cutts
Anthracyclines are a clinically important class of antineoplastic agents used to treat a wide variety of solid and blood cancers. The first described anthracycline, daunorubicin, was first isolated from a strain of Streptomyces peucetius in the early 1960s. Clinically the most widely used are doxorubicin, daunorubicin and their semi-synthetic derivatives epirubicin and idarubicin. They primarily act by intercalating with DNA and inhibiting topoisomerase II, resulting in DNA breaks and abrogated DNA synthesis. The most serious side effect of anthracycline use is cumulative dose-dependent cardiotoxicity, limiting recommended maximum lifetime treatment to 400-450 mg/m2. Several liposomal formulations of doxorubicin are in use, having the benefits of prolonging retention rate while reducing peak plasma concentration of free drug. Several clinical trials of anthracycline-loaded nanoparticles are currently underway.
VOLUME 4 (2017)
ISSUE 1
Previous issue
Authors: Aaron Smith, Michael AF Parkes, Georgia K Atkin-Smith, Rochelle Tixeira, Ivan KH Poon
The disassembly of a dying cell into smaller fragments is a fundamental biological process during apoptosis. Recently, a number of distinct morphologic changes have been identified that could mediate the fragmentation of an apoptotic cell. Presented here is a figure that describes the progression of apoptotic cell disassembly.
Authors: Graham Beards, et al.
Rotavirus is the most common cause of diarrhoeal disease among infants and young children. It is a genus of double-stranded RNA viruses in the family Reoviridae. Nearly every child in the world is infected with rotavirus at least once by the age of five. Immunity develops with each infection, so subsequent infections are less severe; adults are rarely affected. There are eight species of this virus, referred to as A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H. Rotavirus A, the most common species, causes more than 90% of rotavirus infections in humans.
Authors: Michaël R. Laurent , Lode Van Overbeke
Gastrointestinal bleeding (GI bleed) is a common and potentially life-threatening reason for emergency room and intensive care unit admission. This article reports the case of an 83-year-old man with acute GI bleeding from an unusual cause. The clinical information is presented in a step-by-step and question-answer format for learning purposes. This paper is particularly aimed at an internal medicine readership.
Authors: Soumyadeep Bhaumik, Zohra Lassi
Pneumonia is the most important cause of death in children under five years old. Vitamin D is cheap and known to improve the immune system response against respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis. This meta-analysis found three randomized placebo-controlled trials of vitamin D as an additional treatment for pneumonia in 997 infants and children. Taken together, these trials showed no effect of vitamin D cure rates, mortality, time to clinical recovery or duration of hospital stay for pneumonia in children. The quality of evidence is however still low.
Authors: Kholhring Lalchhandama
Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) is a family of proteins present on the membrane surface of red blood cells (RBCs or erythrocytes) that are infected by the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum. PfEMP1 is synthesized during the parasite's blood stage (erythrocytic schizogony) inside the RBC, during which the clinical symptoms of falciparum malaria are manifested. Acting as both an antigen and adhesion protein, it is thought to play a key role in the high level of virulence associated with P. falciparum.
Authors: Marion Wright, et al.
The hippocampus (named after its resemblance to the seahorse, from the Greek ἱππόκαμπος, "seahorse" from ἵππος hippos, "horse" and κάμπος kampos, "sea monster") is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial memory that enables navigation.
Authors: Thomas Shafee, Rohan Lowe
Genes consist of multiple sequence elements that together encode the functional product and regulate its expression. Despite their fundamental importance, there are few freely available diagrams of gene structure. Presented here are two figures that summarise the different structures found in eukaryotic and prokaryotic genes. Common gene structural elements are colour-coded by their function in regulation, transcription, or translation.
Authors: Thomas Shafee, Diptanshu Das, Gwinyai Masukume, Mikael Häggström
WikiJournal of Medicine is an open access, peer reviewed journal free of publication charges for its authors. It publishes both original research and reviews. It was created in 2014 and has grown rapidly since then. This editorial will highlight its unique features and the developments seen in 2016.
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