Talk:Mycoplasma
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
Mycoplasma is part of WikiProject Microbiology, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of microbiology and microbiology-related topics. Please work to improve this article, or visit our project page to find other ways of helping. |
||
| Start | This article has been rated as start-Class on the assessment scale. |
||
| Mid | This article is on a subject of mid-importance within microbiology. | ||
|
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need. |
|||
Contents |
[edit] How many people are infected with mycoplasma?
Has anybody an idea of how many people are infected with mycoplasmas (e.g infections with M. pneumonia or M.hominis? I can not find any data about this. I think that this is due to the effect that, although mycoplasmas can cause respiratory and urogenital diseases, most people are chronically infected without any apparent illness (so that the illness remains clinically silent) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.58.253.57 (talk) 18:20, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
- No idea if this is accurate, but a book I'm reading called The Bacteria Menace says that all of North America is. Bit odd-sounding though, isn't it? DarkestMoonlight (talk) 16:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Section Unmerge?
Make general characteristics new section differentiated from history?
[edit] "Resemble" bacteria?
"Mycoplasma is a genus of small microorganisms that resemble bacteria" [ph1]
but,
"The genus Mycoplasma is one of several genera within the class Mollicutes. Mollicutes are bacteria... "[ph2]
Mollicutes=bacteria, mycoplasma=subset of mollicutes, therefore mycoplasma=bacteria, or not... ?
Or "Mycoplasma is a genus of small bacterium that lack cell walls and have small genomes and low GC-content (18-40 mol%)," getting rid of "resemble"... ?--Renice 15:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Start grade
This article has been graded at 'start' level. What is missing? What needs to be done? Robwaldo 23:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
- Generally speaking, I'd start by reading WP:What is a good article?. More specifically, references need to be integrated (see WP:CITE#Footnotes), more refs are needed overall (WP:RS), and subsections probably need clarification. Images are needed (or at least an image) -- see WP:UPIMAGE for details on how; the Public Health Image Library is a good place to start looking. There's certainly more to work on, but these are the things I'd start with. -- MarcoTolo 00:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Mycoplasma and cancer
I would like to propose a paragraph or so re the ongoing research involving mycoplasma and cancer. Since the 1990's, scientists have been studying such an association, with the most prominent American being Lo of the Armed Services Institute of pathology, Bethesda.
At the moment, I have---in addition to Lo's seminal study---14 article abstracts demonstrating this association, both in vivo, and in the clinical setting. For example, scientists have noted a strong association between Mycoplasma hyorhinis and gastric carcinoma. I think this is significant given the fact that H.pylori is now considered a prime suspect in gastric carcinoma, and that represents one of the first associations recognized by the medical profession, of a cancer/bacterial association. [BTW, these findings represent an interesting shift from the usual and traditional cancer/virus research which has been ongoing since the 1960's].
I'd appreciate some feedback on this proposal before submitting an edit. Regards Ronsword 15:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
- Despite the number of papers, none of which is in a top journal, the connection between mycoplasmas and cancer is not accepted by the mainstream within the mycoplasma research community. That isn't to say it's wrong; there simply hasn't been overwhelmingly convincing evidence published. As such, I would advocate waiting for a real clincher before adding anything to the article about this. In my opinion, dedicating any space to this matter at present might give readers the wrong impression. I suspect even S.-C. Lo himself would agree. MicroProf 19:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
hi: Sorry. I wasn't aware that Proc Natl Acad Sci, Mol Cancer Ther, Urology, World J Gastroenteroloy, Gynecol Oncol, Microbiol Immunol as well as Peking University School of Oncology, Imperial College School of Medicine, St Mary's Hospital, London, UK, et al., were not reputable or highly regarded journals and/or sources. (FYI, please see a full list of abstract citations this link: http://members.aol.com/CAbacteria/mycoplasma.html
Just for the record, I didn't mean to convey the impression of proposing a positive correlation between Mycoplasma and cancer in the article, but simply a paragraph or a few references pointing out that an association is being investigated in a number of laboratories.Ronsword 14:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
- No need to be sarcastic. I'll admit that I didn't really look at the older references, but for good reason. Nearly all of the papers on this topic that are in the best journals are quite old by now, which typically indicates that people saw something exciting but were unable to sustain that excitement by following through with truly meaningful results. And by the way, I certainly never said the journals in which the more recent material has been published are disreputable - for the most part, they're mid-level or lower in terms of quality and impact. What I offered was my opinion - and I'll restate it - that the connection between mycoplasmas and cancer is poorly established. My opinion is that if this link were sufficiently well established to warrant inclusion here, there would be more than just a sporadic stream of observations published in mostly mediocre journals. That's just me, and I hope others will chime in. If you want to go ahead and put a cautious word or two in, I won't take it out, but I don't want people to read this article and get the idea that mycoplasmas are established as a significant cause of cancer. MicroProf 18:36, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Your points are illuminating. I never realized that there were hierarchies as regards impact, follow-through, etc. in the world of peer review. I mean that sincerely. I must add, however, that I don't completely agree the follow-through issue is about scientists not being excited to continue the mycoplasma/cancer research; I think it may be more about funding, and the fear of being associated with a highly controversial area of research. The cancer bacteria debate is an old one, and has been so since the 1920's, having created very sharp schisms between what is regarded as orthodox, vs. that which is assailed as unorthodox. However, controversy or not, there is a body of real-time research, and I thought the public should at least know about it, and thus, the basis of my proposal.
If a reference were to be included re:mycoplasma research, it might be something like: "during the last decade, scientists have been exploring an association between mycoplasma and cancer. Despite a number of interesting studies, this association hasn't been clearly established, and has yet to be fully elucidated.
What do you think? Ronsword 21:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
- Well, I guess if it's nothing more than that, no harm done, but you have to bear in mind that in this regard mycoplasmas are not special. They are one member of a long list of bacteria for which there's a small amount of evidence of association with cancer, including chlamydias, Listeria, Helicobacter, and others. And for the record, I really doubt that fear of doing controversial research (and this really wouldn't be that controversial compared to other things) is a limiting factor. Negative results are seldom reported; when reports follow the pattern that this research has followed -- a few moderately big papers followed by what I would call the "splat" sound of a few small ones -- it suggests that there are a lot of negative results we haven't heard about. MicroProf 03:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. So what you are saying is that, negative results wouldn't necessarily turn up in a Medline search? Though I have come across several papers which weren't favorable to a mycoplasma/cancer association, or were simply inconclusive; so some of that is indeed being reported. However, the impression I get is, there is simply not a lot of mycoplasma/cancer research going on---as opposed to disfavorable research not being reported---but that's my take on it. It also seems that H.pylori research seems to be commanding much of the attention as far as cancer and bacteria go, but that might be due the fact that consensus has to build around a starting candidate as far as bacteria go. Ronsword 04:17, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Is this true?
A book I'm reading says that all of North America is infected...
DarkestMoonlight (talk) 16:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
- Absolutely. We all have it... :| TeamZissou (talk) 22:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
