While many of us know how deadly dysentery can be from playing countless hours of The Oregon Trail, there’s only so much that the classic game covered regarding this multifaceted disease. For instance, did you know that it can be caused by multiple pathogenic microbes? Or that it is and always has been closely associated with warfare and armies? Or that it remains one of the leading causes of death globally for children under five? In this episode all about dysentery, we pick up where The Oregon Trail left off. Tune in to hear facts about ancient toilets and a list of famous people killed by the disease and to learn how dysentery isn’t just about diarrhea and how the “bloody flux” lives up to its (horrible) colorful name.
| History | Biology |
| Mitchell, Piers, ed. Sanitation, latrines and intestinal parasites in past populations. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2015. | Hendrickse, R.G., 1973. Dysentery including amoebiasis. British medical journal, 1(5854), p.669. |
| Connor, Thomas R., et al. “Species-wide whole genome sequencing reveals historical global spread and recent local persistence in Shigella flexneri.” Elife 4 (2015): e07335. | Pfeiffer, M.L., DuPont, H.L. and Ochoa, T.J., 2012. The patient presenting with acute dysentery–a systematic review. Journal of Infection, 64(4), pp.374-386. |
| Davison, Wilburt. “Bacillary Dysentery in Children.” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 31.353 (1920). | Stanley Jr, S.L., 2003. Amoebiasis. The lancet, 361(9362), pp.1025-1034. |
| Haycock, David Boyd. “Exterminated by the bloody flux.” Journal for maritime research 4.1 (2002): 15-39. | Kotloff, K.L., Riddle, M.S., Platts-Mills, J.A., Pavlinac, P. and Zaidi, A.K., 2018. Shigellosis. The Lancet, 391(10122), pp.801-812. |
| Kuhns, Dwight M., and Theodore G. Anderson. “A fly-borne bacillary dysentery epidemic in a large military organization.” American Journal of Public Health and the Nations Health 34.7 (1944): 750-755. | Bennish, M.L., 1991. Potentially lethal complications of shigellosis. Reviews of infectious diseases, 13(Supplement_4), pp.S319-S324. |
| Lampel, Keith A., Samuel B. Formal, and Anthony T. Maurelli. “A brief history of Shigella.” EcoSal Plus 8.1 (2018). | Khalil, I.A., Troeger, C., Blacker, B.F., Rao, P.C., Brown, A., Atherly, D.E., Brewer, T.G., Engmann, C.M., Houpt, E.R., Kang, G. and Kotloff, K.L., 2018. Morbidity and mortality due to shigella and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli diarrhoea: the Global Burden of Disease Study 1990–2016. The Lancet infectious diseases, 18(11), pp.1229-1240. |
| Mann, James. Medical Sketches of the Campaigns of 1812, 13, 14: To which are Added, Surgical Cases; Observations on Military Hospitals; and Flying Hospitals Attached to a Moving Army. Also, an Appendix, Comprising a Dissertation on Dysentery… and Observations on the Winter Epidemic of 1815-16, Denominated Peripneumonia Notha; as it Appeared at Sharon and Rochester, State of Massachusetts. Dedham [Mass.]: Printed by H. Mann and Company, 1816. | Williams, P. and Berkley, J., 2016. Dysentery (shigellosis) current who guidelines and the WHO essential medicine list for children. World Health Organization. |
| The, Hao Chung, et al. “The genomic signatures of Shigella evolution, adaptation and geographical spread.” Nature Reviews Microbiology 14.4 (2016): 235-250. | DuPont, H.L., Levine, M.M., Hornick, R.B. and Formal, S.B., 1989. Inoculum size in shigellosis and implications for expected mode of transmission. The Journal of infectious diseases, 159(6), pp.1126-1128. |
| Weedall, Gareth D., et al. “Genomic diversity of the human intestinal parasite Entamoeba histolytica.” Genome biology 13.5 (2012): 1-13. | Wang, L.H., Fang, X.C. and Pan, G.Z., 2004. Bacillary dysentery as a causative factor of irritable bowel syndrome and its pathogenesis. Gut, 53(8), pp.1096-1101. |
| Weedall, Gareth D, and Neil Hall. “Evolutionary genomics of Entamoeba.” Research in microbiology vol. 162,6 (2011): 637-45. doi:10.1016/j.resmic.2011.01.007 | Shirley, D.A.T., Farr, L., Watanabe, K. and Moonah, S., 2018, July. A review of the global burden, new diagnostics, and current therapeutics for amebiasis. In Open forum infectious diseases (Vol. 5, No. 7, p. ofy161). US: Oxford University Press. |
| Yang, Jian, et al. “Revisiting the molecular evolutionary history of Shigella spp.” Journal of molecular evolution 64.1 (2007): 71-79. | Mani, S., Wierzba, T. and Walker, R.I., 2016. Status of vaccine research and development for Shigella. Vaccine, 34(26), pp.2887-2894. |
| WHO Sanitation Fact Sheet, June 2019. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sanitation |
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