ArticleEcoHealth2018
Movement Patterns of Small Rodents in Lassa Fever-Endemic Villages in Guinea.
Article in EcoHealth, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing the Environmental Drivers of Lassa Fever in West Africa: A Systematic Review.Viruses · 2025Pooled it
- Climate-driven host ecology as a framework for zoonotic disease risk: Understanding transferability across arenavirus systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Local Knowledge of Land Use Effects on Human-Rodent Interfaces in Lassa-Endemic Nigeria.EcoHealth · 2026Article
- Land use gradients drive spatial variation in Lassa fever host communities in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Scaling Lassa Virus Dynamics within Anthropogenic Ecosystems (SCAPES) Study Protocol: a mixed-methods observational cohort study of humans, rodents, and landscapes in Nigeria.Wellcome open research · 2026Article
- Serosurveillance Identifies an Endemic Hotspot of Lassa Fever in Faranah, Upper Guinea.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Socioeconomic and environmental predictors of lassa fever transmission in Lower Bambara Chiefdom, Kenema District, Eastern Sierra Leone.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Serological Evidence of Lassa Virus Exposure in Non-Viruses · 2025Article
- Modelling the effects of climate and human factor on Lassa fever distribution in Ondo State Nigeria.International journal of biometeorology · 2025Article
- Estimation of Lassa fever incidence rates in West Africa: Development of a modeling framework to inform vaccine trial design.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- A Review of the Epidemiology of Lassa Fever in Nigeria.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Diversity ofMicroorganisms · 2025Article
- Rodent control strategies and Lassa virus: some unexpected effects in Guinea, West Africa.Emerging microbes & infections · 2024Article
- Lassa virus in novel hosts: insights into the epidemiology of lassa virus infections in southern Nigeria.Emerging microbes & infections · 2024Article
- Chapare virus infection and current perspectives on dentistry.Clinical oral investigations · 2024Review
- Circulation of Lassa virus across the endemic Edo-Ondo axis, Nigeria, with cross-species transmission between multimammate mice.Emerging microbes & infections · 2023Article
- Twenty-nine years of continuous monthly capture-mark-recapture data of multimammate mice (Mastomys natalensis) in Morogoro, Tanzania.Scientific data · 2023Article
- Seroprevalence of anti-Lassa Virus IgG antibodies in three districts of Sierra Leone: A cross-sectional, population-based study.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2023Article
- Lassa Virus Genetics.Current topics in microbiology and immunology · 2023Article
- Epidemiology of Lassa Fever.Current topics in microbiology and immunology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The Natal multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) is the reservoir host of Lassa arenavirus, the etiological agent of Lassa fever in humans. Because there exists no vaccine for human use, rodent control and adjusting human behavior are currently considered to be the only options for Lassa fever control. In order to develop efficient rodent control programs, more information about the host's ecology is needed. In this study, we investigated the spatial behavior of M. natalensis and other small rodents in two capture-mark-recapture and four dyed bait (Rhodamine B) experiments in Lassa fever-endemic villages in Upper Guinea. During the capture-mark-recapture studies, 23% of the recaptured M. natalensis moved between the houses and proximate fields. While M. natalensis was found over the entire study grid (2 ha), other rodent species (Praomys daltoni, Praomys rostratus, Lemniscomys striatus, Mus spp.) were mostly trapped in the surrounding fields. Distances between recapture occasions never exceeded 100 m for all rodent species. During the dyed bait experiments, 11% of M. natalensis and 41% of P. daltoni moved from the fields to houses. We conclude that commensal M. natalensis easily moves between houses and proximate fields in Guinea. We therefore consider occasional domestic rodent elimination to be an unsustainable approach to reduce Lassa virus transmission risk to humans, as M. natalensis is likely to reinvade houses quickly from fields in which rodents are not controlled. A combination of permanent rodent elimination with other control strategies (e.g., make houses rodent proof or attract predators) could be more effective for Lassa fever control, but must be further investigated.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.