Resurgence of Lassa fever in Nigeria: clinical features, epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnostic methods, and treatment

Lassa virus, the causative agent of Lassa fever (a severe viral hemorrhagic sickness characterized by excessive bleeding), is an enveloped, single-stranded, segmented, negative-sense RNA virus belonging to the family Arenaviridae. The genome of the Lassa virus consists of large (~7 kb) and small (~3.4 kb) segments where RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and zinc-binding proteins are encoded by large elements1. On the contrary, nucleoprotein, a major structural protein, and glycoprotein complex are consisted by a small segment of the Lassa viral genome2. The virus was identified in 1969 in the Nigerian town of Lassa. However, the disease was first narrated in the 1950s. WHO reported that during the first and 15th weeks of the 2023 Lassa outbreak in Nigeria identified 4702…