Ifeoluwa Tugbobo

Deedra Brown

February 20th, 2019

Scholarly Analysis of Rift Valley Virus Article

The development of Rift Valley fever(RVF) virus has been in recent scientific news, especially following the research of lead researcher Cynthia McMillen and her team. In Science Advances journal, the article “Rift Valley fever virus induces fetal demise in Sprague-Dawley rats through direct placental infection” was published on December 5th, 2018. These scientific investigators focused on how RVF virus negatively affects the fetuses of pregnant rats after placental infection. River Valley fever (RVF) is a viral disease contracted by domesticated animals where contact with the infected blood and organs of these animals often result in human infections. Scientists are concerned that this disease may be detrimental to human fetuses.

In the first sentence of the article’s introduction, RVF was defined and briefly elaborated on in terms of how far the infection had spread. Additional background information was provided. In this article, the researchers chose to employ the method of occupying niche-where present research on an already known topic is taken in a different direction. This study addressed precisely how the experiment was carried out in generalized terms, the overall results and what made its specific study differs from others.  The journal, Science Advances, is not particular to the article’s discipline of virology. In the methodology section, the methods were presented in a clear, concise and logical manner. Scientists completed in an ex vivo inoculation of cell cultures of second-trimester human fetal tissue with RFV following viral replication. A description of how data was collected was presented. The methodology was introduced in the past tense and passive voice, thus emphasizing the research.

The results section was inundated with figures, tables, and graphs. Pictures of fetal rats and their development over time was shown several times. The results mentioned the survival rates of the fetal rats as well as the human placental tissue in percentages. In the discussion, the implication of viral infection was mentioned initially as a way to segue into how RFV virus may impact pregnant women and their children. Then it is compared to other similar diseases such as Ebola or Lassa. There were also references to previous research made and compared to the current research. The results of the present study aligned with the reports of one particular study and the researchers chose to comment that there may be a strong implication that RVFV infection may be “a causative agent of miscarriage in late gestation.” The present study’s results mentioned that it did further support previous research. The discussion was successful in interpreting and explaining the results. The diction used to explain the results included “this indicates,” “this suggests,” and “observed.” It is not clear whether the findings can be generalized to another population. Notably, the details in the discussion went from specific to general; there were descriptive sentences concerning the results initially, and there was a transition to the future works which contained more generalized language. The tenses did change from “displayed” and “observed” to “could be” and “would be.”

 

References

1. Mcmillen CM, Arora N, Boyles DA, Albe JR, Kujawa MR, Bonadio JF, Coyne CB, Hartman AL. 2018 Dec 12. Rift Valley fever virus induces fetal demise through direct placental infection. Science Advances.