Talk:Inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology

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This article was nominated for deletion on 18 November 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

Contents 1 Once 2 problems with the article 3 I am working on the article 4 Footnotes 5 Worked on article some more 6 DGG edits improved article but big problems remain 7 Inflammation and Diseases 8 Point of the article 9 Reply 022508

[edit] Once

Once a Prod tag has been removed, the only course for deletion is speedy--if justified--or else AfD. PROD is only for unchallenged deletions. And please note the underconstruction tag and what it says. DGG (talk) 08:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

• There is no point in waiting while the article is edited further; it is prima facie WP:OR and eligible for deletion. You are just putting the inevitable off.   Skopp   08:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] problems with the article

The principal author asked my advice on this:

• I think it has to be split. The material on the successful resolution of the etiology of various diseases is one broad topic--it would be a summary article for each of them,and is quite a different topic from those diseases that are presently' of unknown etiology. Since the title says "unknown", I suggest removing the material on disease with the cause already known. If nobody else does that, I will do it tomorrow. It could go into an article about finding causes of inflammatory diseases, but it would have to connect with the article on each disease. I am not going to write it.
• The general discussion on unknown diseases should probably be condensed a good deal. A WP article cannot be written by assembling long quotes from other published material. They need to be summarized. And its better for more than one source to be used.
• The discussion of individual diseases with unknown etiology should take into account the existence of articles on the diseases themselves. Frankly, I'd consider such articles of higher priority if they do not exist. I am also not all that comfortable with defining a class of diseases as ""The White Dot Syndromes" on the basis of a single specialized review article.
• I haven't the least idea why inflammatory diseases are in any way special here. To say "a unique category because they are all inflammatory " is begging the question--why are they a unique category worth an article? DGG (talk) 05:23, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

ReasonableLogicalMan also asked my feedback on the article. I think it is useful, I support its creation. On the other hand, I would transform it into a simple list of wikilinks. The details should be discussed in the individual disease pages.

The list is, of course, very incomplete. From the top of my head, I notice the absence of inflammatory bowel diseases, psoriasis, eczema, chronic fatigue syndrome, sarcoidosis. I do not consider rheumatoid arthritis as truly idiopathic, but rather an autoimmune disease. I do not believe that IBS belong in the list; all biopsies I have seen from IBS patients are normal, as they should be by definition. I am not sure what is meant by "gastroenteritis". Emmanuelm (talk) 19:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Emmanual, thanks for the pointers. Do you have descriptions of the inflammatory patterns of some of the diseases mentioned? ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 04:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I am working on the article

Thanks for all the comments. I see all the problems that everyone is coming up with. And I will understand if the article has to be deleted, but I'd like a little more time, as I am trying to edit the article a little bit each day. I agree that I should have written more of the article before I started editing. When you read Wikipedia's home page and see: "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" you think, okay, I'll go ahead. But Wikipedia really wants you to read and understand an entire process before posting - in case any other newbies read this. I can't seem to get to the concept paragraph right now to edit it. How do I do that? There is no edit link up there, is there? I am going to add a bunch of references over the next few days. The article I hope to write is asking, what are the inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology? How many of them are there? (Does anyone already know this by the way?) What are the most common inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology? What kind of inflammation is associated with inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology? And actually, how many kinds of inflammation patterns are there? ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 06:01, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

To get to the first paragraph, you simply edit the article from the tab at the top. (In fact, you can edit the whole article from there if you choose)

Personally, I formate references manually according to WP:CITE.

The basic guide to writing an article is WP:FIRST. I would certainly advise starting out by making simpler articles than this multi-part one.

DGG (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Footnotes

Is their another Wiki tool for the references besides this one? http://diberri.dyndns.org/wikipedia/templates/?ddb=&type=pmid&id=17893995 They don't seem to be coming up in the same format as some of the other references. ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 17:07, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Worked on article some more

I have worked on the article quite a bit more, putting up references, reorganizing, and adding some new diseases. I would still like more time. I hope to have more spare time over the Thanksgiving weekend, which is coming up, to work on the article. Thanks. ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 23:24, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, I would prefer not to separate the article into two parts until I have gone through the current pages better. With further research I am finding that some diseases are hard to place into one category or the other. I need more time to examine the review articles. Also, after reorganization, I think a section on inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology, now thought to be solved, does probably work well on this page, at least for now. ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 01:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

"I am finding that some diseases are hard to place into one category or the other". Indeed. Which is why the diseases should be discussed in their own page. I think this article should be simplified to a list of links. Your very precious contribution will be better appreciated if you incorporate it into the appropriate disease article. Emmanuelm (talk) 19:42, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I looked around WP and found the Category:Ailments of unknown etiology. In it, you will find the page List of syndromes and diseases with unknown etiologies, itself a (very incomplete) list of diseases. You may do one of two things. 1) cross-link your page with that list under the heading "See also", or 2) you may redirect your article to the list where you would create a paragraph called "inflammatory diseases" and paste your list there. I personally favor the latter. In the meantime, I added the category label to your article. Emmanuelm (talk) 20:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DGG edits improved article but big problems remain

Although improved, the article is still a synthesis and an essay. It starts off by stating an intention: a linking of diseases with "unknown etiology" with infection. So the title should be "Inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology that turns out to be microbial", or some contraction of that. The introduction shows the essay structure, as it poses a list of questions to be answered:

Thus there arises the question, are there chronic diseases of unknown etiology which display the pattern of acute inflammation? Or do all chronic diseases of unknown etiology display the pattern of chronic inflammation with mononuclear white blood cells?

This is not how wikipedia is written. I support Emmanuelm's suggestions above. The article should be reduced to a list and included in the other article dealing with ailments of unknown etiology.   Skopp   23:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite understand--this is now a list of the disease which have not yet proven to be microbial or anything else. You seem to be referring to the matter that was deleted, not that which was kept. DGG (talk) 04:11, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

First sentence of article states: "During the history of medicine many inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology, in humans and in animals, have been solved in the sense that a microbe was found to be responsible for causing the disease. Many other inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology have had a microbe, or microbes, associated with them."   Skopp   —Preceding comment was added at 05:20, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• Someone closed the AfD as a Keep. For the record, I think it was both a premature and bad decision. We need to look more closely at the way the editor has created an article to further an agenda he has displayed on other pages (viz. to prove microbes are behind many if not all inflammatory diseases with unknown etiology). WP:SYN, WP:OR and even WP:CRYSTAL are all still much in evidence. The editors voting keep do not appear to have closely considered the merits of this article, in my view. A closer reading of this article and comparison to List of syndromes and diseases with unknown etiologies begs the question of the need for this article, since inflammation can be found in most diseases. Hopefully someone else will see the absurdity of this decision and rescind it, or an admin will speedily delete it at some later date.   Skopp   15:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inflammation and Diseases

I'd like to improve the inflammation component of the article by tracking down more about the microscopic pathology of inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology and I am working on that. Perhaps I can take the now deleted section and start a page on the "History of Inflammatory Diseases of Unknown Etiology" to discuss the solved diseases. I was going to rename the lower section that today, but the content has already been removed. Apparently, there are chronic diseases of unknown etiology that are not inflammatory. As an example, would anyone consider Alzheimer's disease to be an inflammatory disease? ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 01:15, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Alezheimer's has been linked to inflammation, eg PMID 10858586 and [1], [2]   Skopp   —Preceding comment was added at 04:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Good. We can add Alzheimer's to the page. I'm doing it now. Thanks. ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 20:10, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Added paragraph on Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robert Warren, Nobel Prize winners, and discoverers of Helicobacter pylori, as an example of a historical inflammatory disease of unknown etiology.ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 01:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

No, no, this is conclusionary and off-topic. The page should not exist to suggest that bacteria cause inflammatory diseases of unknown origin. That historical stuff can go into a History page (which you suggest above) where it is relevant. Otherwise we could start listing all the inflammatory diseases of known origin in this article, and list the researchers involved. This inclusion simply suggests again that you created this page to soapbox your POV. ► RATEL ◄ 02:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Point of the article

Can anyone tell me (preferably in a single, simple sentence) what the main point of this article is, and why that point would not be served by a merger with List of syndromes and diseases with unknown etiologies? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The point of "Inflammatory Diseases of Unknown Etiology" is to list inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology, describe them, and describe their type of inflammation. This is information that is very hard to obtain, because no one seems to have organized such information. Please help by contributing. ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 23:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know anything about your background, so please forgive me for repeating things you may well know. "Inflammatory" means (exactly, precisely) "the immune system is involved." Given that fact, are there any diseases or conditions of unknown etiology that you believe have zero inflammatory response? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The fact that you have to ask that question demonstrates the need for this article. ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 04:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

RLM, I'm assuming that your ten-day-long silence means that you do not see any substantive difference between Inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology and the contents of Category:Ailments of unknown etiology.

Is there information in this article that you believe does not properly belong in the articles on the individual diseases? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

WAID, no, my silence does not mean what you assume. I am spending some time trying to research the patterns of inflammation in inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology. This information is very hard to obtain as nobody seems to have tabulated the descriptions of inflammation in unsolved diseases in which inflammation is a strong characteristic. Even in the pathology sources I have searched so far, I have not found pictures, etc., of the inflammation typical of these inflammatory diseases of unknown etiology. I will be posting as time allows and could use some research help. It is easy to criticize while it is difficult to contribute. :) ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 04:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

So you see this article as a sort of holding place for the information you're collecting about disparate diseases, with the idea that it will help you develop an idea about, or identify a pattern in, the diseases that you add to the list? Do I understand your goal correctly? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to hear the answer to this question too. And I'd like to ask (anyone) why we can't equally have an article called Non-Inflammatory_diseases_of_unknown_etiology, if this article is a "keep" ? Then we could simply delete the category Category:Ailments of unknown etiology . ► RATEL ◄ 22:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

BTW, how many "Things we don't know" articles has Wikipedia got? And what's the point of such articles? If this sort of thing is encouraged, how long before we start getting articles along the lines of the famous Donald Rumsfeld quote: "Things we don't know that we don't know"? ;-) ► RATEL ◄ 23:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

WAID, no, you do not understand my goals correctly. I should have explained myself better. My goal is to continue to contribute to an expanding article per Wikipedia guidelines. What you are focusing on is a minor subplot. May I ask that you simply contribute something to this article rather than the talk page? ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk —Preceding comment was added at 04:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I honestly don't understand why this article exists, which seriously impairs my ability to help -- at least, I assume that you'd prefer actual "useful help" instead of just "activity". Now if you just want someone making mistakes so that it looks like lots of edits are happening, I can do that, but I'm convinced you have better things in mind than making it longer just for the sake of making it longer.

Seriously, what's the goal here? Neither your comments nor the article indicate the overall strategy. How will I know what should be included? What standard do you have for what is inflammatory, or what is an unknown etiology? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Taking a look after a while, my advice is to now concentrate on a few truly unknown diseases. This mixes up the rare and the common, and similarly syndromes that may well not be a specific disease, such as Eczema, with ones like MS, where there are still major gaps, but a good deal of the pathology is now understood. In general, the references seem of very variable quality: there is a considerable difference between J. Infect. Dis. and Acta. Biol. Hung. When relying for overall summaries of the literature, it should be borne in mind that minor journals publish unauthoritative reviews with a very weak claim to being peer-reviewed. I am concerned that this article still remains a coatrack for fringe claims about nanobacteria. DGG (talk) 06:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear user:DGG, I have noted your statement above that "my advice is to now concentrate on a few truly unknown diseases," and your advice on Eczema, and quality of references, and I will try to improve all aspects of the article using your advice.ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 01:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear user:DGG, You do not need to fear that this site is a "coatrack for fringe claims about nanobacteria." Feel free to add the pros and cons about nanobacteria based on the medical literature. I am not pushing any agenda about nanobacteria. I am trying to do neutral point of view editing according to the medical literature. You can help by trying to answer the questions you have already posed: "...are there any diseases or conditions of unknown etiology that you believe have zero inflammatory response?" And by answering the other questions you ask, "What standard do you have for what is inflammatory, or what is an unknown etiology?" But in the latter questions, what standard does modern medicine have for what is inflammatory? Or what standard does modern medicine have for what is an unknown etiology? ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk 15:09, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

DGG didn't ask these questions; I did. Frankly, I do not understand how I or DGG or anyone except you can be expected to provide your answer to these questions. I want you to tell me what you think about these issues:

1. Can you name a single condition of unknown etiology that you believe to have no inflammatory involvement?
2. What is your standard for an inflammatory response?
3. What is your standard for an unknown etiology?

I'm perfectly willing to receive as answers something like "The immune system is involved in everything, every disease involves inflammation, and I'm willing to accept any reasonable story about etiology." I'm willing to accept as an adequate answer, "Breast cancer has no inflammatory response, I think it needs to be red and puffy to be inflammation, and I don't think anyone knows what really causes any case of cancer." I don't need the answer to be sourced, True™, or even verifiable. I don't need a long essay, unless you just feel like expounding at great length. But I do specifically want your answers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

• Clearly this article flies in the face of the rule against synthesis and it is crying out for deletion. ► RATEL ◄ 04:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reply 022508

Dear User:WhatamIdoing, I'm sorry for the confusion with DGG. I hope to collaborate with you since you have shown interest in this page. Let me start by asking you these questions? (Sorry. This got to be a long list once I got going.) Do you feel that schizophrenia is an inflammatory disease? What about autism? Wilson's disease? Leukodystrophy? Depression? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? seizures? cardiac conduction disease? chronic dislocation of the bladder? bullous keratopathy? keratoconus without hydrops? keratoglobus? Groenouw stromal dystrophy type II? Labyrinthine Capsule Otosclerosis? tinnitus? Minamata disease? Noninflammatory spongiform polioencephalomyelopathy? Noninflammatory chronic pelvic pain syndrome? non-inflammatory musculoskeletal pain? Non-inflammatory joint effusion/Non-Inflammatory Joint Disease? Non-inflammatory Monarticular Arthritis Osteochondritis Dissecans? von Willebrand's disease? joint hypermobility syndrome? non-inflammatory musculoskeletal pain? functional bowel disorders? non-inflammatory diseases of the salivary glands? cancer? posttraumatic perforation of the ear? otosclerosis? cholesteatoma? Non-inflammatory dermal elastolysis? non-inflammatory dilated myocardiopathy? Sudden infant death syndrome? Copenhagen disease? Virchow-Seckel syndrome? It appears that many, but clearly not all, of these diseases or syndromes are considered to be "non-inflammatory" by current medical consensus. Some of them are even named "non-inflammatory." I'm willing to take a second look at all of them with you. As to the definition of inflammatory response, I found this by searching google:

Definitions of inflammatory response on the Web: 1) The immune system’s normal response to tissue injury or abnormal stimulation caused by a physical, chemical, or biological substance. [www.alzgmc.org/about_alz/glossary.htm] 2) Complex response of tissues to injury, characterized by immune system activation and local production of toxic metabolites (designed to destroy invading organisms or materials). When excessive, this response damages surrounding healthy tissues. [www.allp.com/LiquiVent/lv_gloss.htm] 3) A type of non-specific immune response; involves the release of chemicals from basophils that increase blood circulation and white blood cell migration to the affected area. [health.enotes.com/nursing-encyclopedia/blood] 4) Inflammation is the complex biological response of vascular tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants. It is a protective attempt by the organism to remove the injurous stimuli as well as initiate the healing process for the tissue. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammatory response]

This was from this page: [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=Yo8&q=define%3Ainflammatory+response&btnG=Search}

As to defining unknown etiology, there are over 97,000 abstracts on medline that use the term. Thus unknown etiology is often defined by the researchers themselves. ReasonableLogicalMan(Talk —Preceding comment was added at 01:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a long list of diseases. Do you think that all of them are caused by inflammation? (Or at least that it's likely?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)