Talk:Human pathogen

Microbe?

The first sentence is misleading, I don't think prions can be considered to fall under "microbes or microorganisms". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.14.108.154 (talk) 02:19, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Untitled

The potency section is contradictory and doesn't read too well either and none of that section has a citation... maybe it should be deleted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.30.48.42 (talk) 04:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Neisseria menigitidis? I'm having trouble believing meningitus has never reached the radar on the 'pedia...

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Why is Thiomargarita namibiensis listed as a pathogen? What disease does it cause? -- Someone else 22:59 Oct 23, 2002 (UTC)

woops. it's gone

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I'll have this page on my to do list, unless someone lists the mechanics pathogens use to cause disease before me :) -MGM 15:03, Apr 18, 2004 (UTC)

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The page was listed on "pages needing attention", and User:Heidimo also asked me to take a glance at it. IMHO, most material is redundant and could be merged with list of infectious diseases (just add the names of the pathogens to the diseases they cause). Just a list of all known pathogens is a silly endeavour. Any opinions?
JFjkjjjyou mum puda W | T@lk 11:46, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

may be useful for those just wanting the term defined. I think it is now quite good for most purposes.--inks 14:24, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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The section entitled "Types" gives the impression that there are only two categories of pathogenic organisms, namely fungi and viruses. But bacteria are just as important, and in addition to those three commonly-cited categories, there are pathogenic organisms that are protozoans and Helminthes (e.g., roundworms). Shouldn't these three categories be added as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.214.169.254 (talk) 17:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Escherichia coli is most commonly causing a urinary tract infection!!!

Thanks for the very useful article. A great source of information. Much appreciated. NaySay 18:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Escherichia Coli might be the most commonly cause for urinary tract infection, but according to sources cited in the Escherichia Coli article(The first source, second paragraph half in it), it is not regarded as a pathogen because only some strains of it will cause illness.

62.97.167.17 19:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

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i think, this article focuses a bit too much on human pathogens. especially in the table about "types of pathogens". Myrmeleon formicarius (talk) 04:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

??? there was no table about types of pathogens 75.155.134.185 (talk) 20:34, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

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Bit of an issue with formatting on this page, with lots of information being displayed in the 'prions' section of the table. Im not wikiliterate enough to fix this however :( Needs sorting out though. 83.100.130.69 (talk) 09:31, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Etymology

I think the etymology in this entry is wrong. It's my understanding from some other research that pathogen comes from the Greek pathos meaning "suffering" or "sorrow" and the French génique meaning "to give rise to." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stuboo (talk • contribs) 12:18, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't make much sense for the -gen part to come from gignomai OR genique, rather than the same greek source for the -gen in other words such as oxygen, γένος or -γενής http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-gen 27.32.241.104 (talk) 04:00, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Pathogen definition - misappropriation =

An earlier commentator is, I think, right in that the definition given of a pathogen is wrong.

This article has just been published in the OnlineEarly section the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology (free access).

A proliferation of pathogens through the 20th century

J. Cunliffe

Abstract

A substantial proportion of immunologists, microbiologists and health professionals – and, indeed, many dictionaries – currently regard the term pathogen as a synonym for a pathogenic organism (most often a micro-organism). I will argue that this is a distortion of its original meaning – “a specific causative agent of disease”. An analysis of the historical use of the term pathogen together with a comparison of the meanings of pathogen, pathogenic and pathogenesis suggest that this was an insidious change. It began as a convenient abbreviation, escalated into a misappropriation and is now lodged in bio-medicine’s popular lexicon. In science, we should resist the pressures brought about by the mass action of common usage – unless there is a good, logical reason to accept this change. I propose that this common usage results in a distortion and leads to conceptual confusion, particularly when we try to understand the interaction between hosts and invasive organisms. This drift, in which pathogen becomes exclusively a living organism, is corrupting. There is a strong case for correcting and reversing it.

doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3083.2008.02130.x —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cunlij (talk • contribs) 09:25, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the seminal question to ask is this: "Is asbestos a pathogen?" If you feel obliged to answer yes (I think you should) then this immediately exposes the corruption brought about by the ongoing constriction of the term "pathogen". The French are much more true to the original meaning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.148.146.83 (talk) 10:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Interesting citation. I second the opinion. If you read papers in the biological and medical circle, the term "pathogen" really (overwhelmingly) refers to (all kinds of) disease causing agents. That is, pathogen includes infectious organisms, disease causing chemicals, debris of physical matter (micro-, nanoparticles), biological (macro)molecules, and the disease causing agents that arise in and derived from the host cells (including those in the human body), such as cancerous cells.--Achian (talk) 18:51, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

What the...

There's a whole lot of information if you press edit, but that bit doesn't show up. Exec. Tassadar (comments, contribs) 09:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

No there isn't75.155.134.185 (talk) 20:51, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Sentence removed pending clarification

I saw this sentence in the lead:

"However, pathogens can infect unicellular organisms from all of the biological kingdoms."

The word "however" was clearly out of place, so I removed it. But still the sentence was misleading/incomplete. Pathogens infect unicellular organisms, besides WHAT? I don't know enough about the subject to correct the sentence, so if YOU know how to phrase it better, please do so. Probably something along the lines of "in addition to many multicellular organisms," but I'm really not sure, nor do I know how essential the sentence is in any case. zadignose (talk) 13:17, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Other ways of transmission

Fleas, bedbugs, rabid animals, and so forth. I think this article could be expanded. Brian Pearson (talk) 23:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC) non-pathogenic: like yogurt, which contains millions of bacteria, they transform into a sugar part of the milk thus making the film of the milk. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.186.196.27 (talk) 00:26, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Pathogen Strength

It doesn't mention how long the ebola virus can survive outside the body 75.155.134.185 (talk) 20:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Pathogenic microbes

A relatively new article (meaning from 2008, so not truly "new"), Pathogenic microbes might be a good candidate for a merge to this article. It defines its territory as human pathogens (although you wouldn't guess that from the name). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Prions

The first sentence: "A pathogen is a microbe or microorganism such as a virus, bacterium, prion, or fungus that causes disease in its animal or plant host."

But prion diseases are caused by proteins, which are neither a microbe nor a microorganism. Should we say instead that a pathogen is an agent that causes disease? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.2.41 (talk) 21:30, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Typo? Under "Potency"

"In countries that have higher sanitation standards, pathogens cannot survive for as long outside of the human. This is seen as encouragement to mutations to the pathogen, which would make it less deadly, as such mutations would allow the pathogen to survive in the host for longer periods of time."

"More?"

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Having said that there is consensus to move once there is a generic Pathogen article. So given the discussion, once at least a stub for Pathogen is available, I'll do the move if admin tools are needed. Leave a note on my talk page. Another option would be to split out the human portion from this article which would not require admin tools. However that should only be done if small sections would be moved to the new article so that the edit history would be preserved. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:55, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

As an update, the stub (actually a start class article) was created and the moves were done. I have asked the creator to sort through the inbound links, including those in templates to get them pointing to the correct article. I would not have any idea which is correct for many of these so best to let the experts do the updates. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:08, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Pathogen → Human pathogen — Only the first paragraph treats the topic in any general way. The rest of the article focuses entirely on human pathogens. Jojalozzo 23:44, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Oppose - the rationale is a reason for expanding the article not for a WP:move. What would be left would still be a pathogen redirect to human pathogen, would it not? As it is the lede does mention animal and plant pathogens, and then when moved how would the lede look? As an illustration of this problem, I have just added a brief subsection animal pathogens from Encyclopedia of Biological Invasions - Page 510 Daniel Simberloff, Marcel Rejmánek - 2011 "Pathogens, animal by Graham J. Hickling University of Tennessee, Knoxville. This new line + ref can be deleted, but consideration needs to be taken of the purpose of a move in this case. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:10, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Opposition withdrawn if there is a generic pathogen article - plant, animal human. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:17, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

• Support WP:BIAS. A stub should be left in its place, otherwise it would be extremely unbalanced in favour of humans. A stubby balanced article is better than an unbalanced one. A subarticle covering humans is better than removing human content to rebalance the article. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 05:07, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose until such time as there is something of substance to replace the moved article. Having Pathogen redirect to Human pathogen is not an improvement over the status quo. Powers ^T 20:52, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

This makes sense. I think the proposal should include creating a Pathogen stub that includes any non-specific pathogen content from this article. Please see this draft: User:Jojalozzo/Pathogen. Jojalozzo 23:28, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

• I think it would be appropriate to have a Pathogen article covering all pathogens as well as a Human pathogen article. This one appears to be a good start on the one about human pathogens. It makes little sense to me that a topic as important as Human pathogen doesn't have an article of its own but redirects to List of human diseases associated with infectious pathogens. If we were to move this one to "Human pathogen", a merge with "List of human diseases associated with infectious pathogens" might make sense. Jojalozzo 05:42, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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