We’re back with our first episode of Season 5, and we’re starting off with a bang! Epidemic typhus, that friend of war and famine, may have caused more wartime deaths than all battles combined, and though it may seem like a disease relegated to the past, typhus only needs a minor disruption to turn it into a scourge of the present. In this epic season opener, we turn our sights to the louse-transmitted Rickettsia prowazekii, first diving into the strange and terrible biology of this bacterium before exploring the deep history of this tiny but mighty pathogen. The vast story of typhus takes us on a journey on a ‘coffin ship’ of the Great Irish Famine, through musings of the origins of human body and head lice, to German-occupied Poland during WWII with tales of vaccine sabotage and lice feeding, and finally to the present day, where we discuss the very real threat that epidemic typhus continues to pose. Check out this episode for all you ever wanted to know about epidemic typhus and more!
| History | Biology |
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| Barrett, Andrea. Ship fever: stories. WW Norton & Company, 1996. | Raoult, D., Woodward, T. and Dumler, J.S., 2004. The history of epidemic typhus. Infectious Disease Clinics, 18(1), pp.127-140. |
| Smith, Cecil Woodham. The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849. Penguin Books, 1962. | Abdad, M.Y., Abou Abdallah, R., Fournier, P.E., Stenos, J. and Vasoo, S., 2018. A concise review of the epidemiology and diagnostics of rickettsioses: Rickettsia and Orientia spp. Journal of clinical microbiology, 56(8), pp.e01728-17. |
| Whyte, Robert. The Ocean Plague: Or, A Voyage to Quebec in an Irish Emigrant Vessel: Embracing a Quarantine at Grosse Isle in 1847: with Notes Illustrative of the Ship-pestilence of that Fatal Year. Coolidge and Wiley, 1848. | Ryan, E.T., Hill, D.R., Solomon, T., Aronson, N. and Endy, T.P., 2019. Hunter’s tropical medicine and emerging infectious diseases e-book. Chapters 66, 67, 68. Elsevier Health Sciences. |
| Zinsser, Hans. Rats, lice and history. Boston, USA (1935). | Perine, P.L., Chandler, B.P., Krause, D.K., McCardle, P., Awoke, S., Habte-Gabr, E., Wisseman Jr, C.L. and McDade, J.E., 1992. A clinico-epidemiological study of epidemic typhus in Africa. Clinical infectious diseases, 14(5), pp.1149-1158. |
| Amanzougaghene, Nadia, et al. “Where are we with human lice? A review of the current state of knowledge.” Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology 9 (2020): 474. | Xu, G., Walker, D.H., Jupiter, D., Melby, P.C. and Arcari, C.M., 2017. A review of the global epidemiology of scrub typhus. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 11(11), p.e0006062. |
| Andersson, Jan O., and Siv GE Andersson. “A century of typhus, lice and Rickettsia.” Research in microbiology 151.2 (2000): 143-150. | Koh, G.C., Maude, R.J., Paris, D.H., Newton, P.N. and Blacksell, S.D., 2010. Diagnosis of scrub typhus. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 82(3), p.368. |
| Andersson, Siv GE, et al. “The genome sequence of Rickettsia prowazekii and the origin of mitochondria.” Nature 396.6707 (1998): 133-140. | Tsioutis, C., Zafeiri, M., Avramopoulos, A., Prousali, E., Miligkos, M. and Karageorgos, S.A., 2017. Clinical and laboratory characteristics, epidemiology, and outcomes of murine typhus: a systematic review. Acta Tropica, 166, pp.16-24. |
| Boutellis, Amina, Laurent Abi-Rached, and Didier Raoult. “The origin and distribution of human lice in the world.” Infection, Genetics and Evolution 23 (2014): 209-217. | Civen, R. and Ngo, V., 2008. Murine typhus: an unrecognized suburban vectorborne disease. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 46(6), pp.913-918. |
| Burns, Jordan N., Rudofo Acuna-Soto, and David W. Stahle. “Drought and epidemic typhus, central Mexico, 1655–1918.” Emerging infectious diseases 20.3 (2014): 442. | Azad, A.F., 1990. Epidemiology of murine typhus. Annual review of entomology, 35(1), pp.553-570. |
| Humphreys, Margaret. “A stranger to our camps: typhus in American history.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2006): 269-290. | The percentage of your poop that is water source: https://theconversation.com/your-poo-is-mostly-alive-heres-whats-in-it-102848 |
| El Karkouri, Khalid, et al. “Origin and evolution of rickettsial plasmids.” PLoS One 11.2 (2016): e0147492. | Nelson, K., Maina, A.N., Brisco, A., Foo, C., Croker, C., Ngo, V., Civen, R., Richards, A.L., Fujioka, K. and Wekesa, J.W., 2018. A 2015 outbreak of flea-borne rickettsiosis in San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County, California. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 12(4), p.e0006385. |
| Li, Wenjun, et al. “Genotyping of human lice suggests multiple emergences of body lice from local head louse populations.” PLoS neglected tropical diseases 4.3 (2010): e641. | Gao, Y., Yan, D., Liu, K., Sun, J., Niu, Y., Liu, X., Wu, H., Zhao, C., Yue, Y., Wang, J. and Zhao, N., 2020. Epidemiological characteristics and spatiotemporal patterns of typhus group rickettsiosis at the county level in China, 2005–2017. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 91, pp.60-67. |
| Nguyen-Hieu, Tung, et al. “Evidence of a louse-borne outbreak involving typhus in Douai, 1710-1712 during the war of Spanish succession.” PLoS One 5.10 (2010): e15405. | Maina, A.N., Farris, C.M., Odhiambo, A., Jiang, J., Laktabai, J., Armstrong, J., Holland, T., Richards, A.L. and O’Meara, W.P., 2016. Q fever, scrub typhus, and rickettsial diseases in children, Kenya, 2011–2012. Emerging infectious diseases, 22(5), p.883. |
| Pankhurst, Richard. “Some notes for the history of typhus in Ethiopia.” Medical history 20.4 (1976): 384-393. | Cherry, C.C. and Binder, A.M., 2020. Trends in clinical diagnoses of typhus group rickettsioses among a large US insurance claims database. Zoonoses and public health, 67(3), pp.291-299. |
| Patterson, K. David. “Typhus and its control in Russia, 1870–1940.” Medical history 37.4 (1993): 361-381. | Letaïef, A., 2006. Epidemiology of rickettsioses in North Africa. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1078(1), pp.34-41. |
| Raoult, Didier, and Véronique Roux. “The body louse as a vector of reemerging human diseases.” Clinical infectious diseases 29.4 (1999): 888-911. | Bozeman, F.M., Masiello, S.A., Williams, M.S. and ELISBERG, B.L., 1975. Epidemic typhus rickettsiae isolated from flying squirrels. Nature, 255(5509), pp.545-547. |
| Raoult, Didier, Theodore Woodward, and J. Stephen Dumler. “The history of epidemic typhus.” Infectious Disease Clinics 18.1 (2004): 127-140. | Bonell, A., Lubell, Y., Newton, P.N., Crump, J.A. and Paris, D.H., 2017. Estimating the burden of scrub typhus: A systematic review. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 11(9), p.e0005838. |
| Raoult, Didier, et al. “Evidence for louse-transmitted diseases in soldiers of Napoleon’s Grand Army in Vilnius.” The Journal of infectious diseases 193.1 (2006): 112-120. | Amanzougaghene, N., Fenollar, F., Raoult, D. and Mediannikov, O., 2020. Where are we with human lice? A review of the current state of knowledge. Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology, 9, p.474. |
| Raoult, Didier, et al. “Molecular identification of lice from pre-Columbian mummies.” The Journal of infectious diseases 197.4 (2008): 535-543. | Coates, S.J., Thomas, C., Chosidow, O., Engelman, D. and Chang, A.Y., 2020. Ectoparasites: pediculosis and tungiasis. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 82(3), pp.551-569. |
| Roux, Veronique, and Didier Raoult. “Body lice as tools for diagnosis and surveillance of reemerging diseases.” Journal of Clinical Microbiology 37.3 (1999): 596-599. | Abbas, M., Aloudat, T., Bartolomei, J., Carballo, M., Durieux-Paillard, S., Gabus, L., Jablonka, A., Jackson, Y., Kaojaroen, K., Koch, D. and Martinez, E., 2018. Migrant and refugee populations: a public health and policy perspective on a continuing global crisis. Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control, 7(1), pp.1-11. |
| Snyder, John C. “Typhus fever in the second world war.” California medicine 66.1 (1947): 3. | |
| Veracx, Aurélie, and Didier Raoult. “Biology and genetics of human head and body lice.” Trends in parasitology 28.12 (2012): 563-571. |
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