Typhus - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Types of typhus

There are three types of typhus:

the typhus with lice or European typhus
the disease of Brill-Zinsser or resurgent typhus
the murine typhus or tropical typhus

Typhus with lice or European Typhus

Epidemic Typhus present in the moderate countries is also called “fever pétéchiale”, and “typhus with lice” or “fever of the prisons”, “fever of the hospitals”, “fever of the boats”, “fever of the famine”, because it is spread when the sanitary arrangements are bad and that the population is very dense, as in the prisons and at edge of the boats. It is thus named because the disease often occurs by epidemics after wars and natural disasters. The causal agent is Rickettsia prowazekii transmitted by the Pou of body ( Pediculus humanus humanus ). While feeding on human which is carrying the bacillus the Pou infects itself. R.prowazekii multiplies in the intestine of the louse and is excreted in its feces. The disease then is transmitted to human not infected which scrapes the puncture of the louse (which itches it) and rubs the excrements on the wound. The Incubation period is of one or two weeks. R.prowazekii can remain in life, by preserving all its virulence, in the excrements desiccated of the lice during several days. Typhus will end up killing the louse, although the germ of the disease remains infectious during several weeks in the corpse of the louse.

The symptoms appear quickly, and they are among most severe among all those which one meets in all the forms typhus. One observes headaches violent one, a high fever in plate, a cough, a eruption, violent muscular pains, shivers, a fall of the blood-pressure, a stuporeux state, a Photophobie (sensitivity to the light), and a Délire. The eruption starts on the thorax approximately five days after the appearance of the fever, and extend to the trunk and at the ends but does not reach the palms and the plants of feet. A symptom common to all the forms of typhus is the fever which can reach 39°C (102°F).

The infection is treated by antibiotic . An intravenous perfusion and the administration of oxygen can be necessary to stabilize the state of the patient. Death rate is from 10% to 60%, but is much weaker so antibiotics as the tétracycline are used precociously. The infection can also be prevented by vaccination.

Epidemic typhus strikes hard for the periods of war and of deprivation. For example, typhus killed several thousands of prisoners in the Concentration camp S of the Nazi Germany during the second world war. The abominable conditions of hygiene imposed in camps like Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen where the circumstances were such as diseases as typhus are largely propagated. A possible scenario for the return of the epidemics of typhus at the time current could proceed in refugee camps during a dramatic famine or a natural disaster.

Disease of resurgent Typhus or Brill-Zinsser

The disease of Brill-Zinsser or resurgent Typhus is an attenuated form of epidemic typhus also due to the bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii and which occurs at an infected patient, after one long period latency. They are in fact a relapse caused by the presence rickettsies remained quiescent in the organization the patients, in particular in the lymphatic ganglia. (situation similar to that of the chicken pox and the shingles). This type of resurgence can also occur among immunodéprimés patients .

Murine typhus or tropical typhus

Synonymous Endemic typhus; Mexican typhus; Nautical typhus; Typhus new world; Urban typhus; Typhus with chips; tropical typhus

The murine Typhus is caused by the bacterium Rickettsia typhi and develop in the tropical and subtropical countries. It is transmitted by the chip of the rat, the Xenopsylla cheopsis ; or more rarely by Rickettsia felis transmitted by chips carried by cats or opossums. The symptoms are inter alia the following: headaches, fever, shivers, joint pains, nauseas, vomiting and cough.

The differential diagnosis is made thanks to a test serologic.

Endemic typhus is easy to treat by antibiotics.

Henrique da Rocha Lima had proven into 1916 that the bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii was the agent responsible for typhus. he baptized the bacteria according to the names of H.T. Ricketts and of Stanislaus von Prowazek, two zoologists who died by studying an epidemic of typhus in a prison camp in 1915. Once these established crucial facts, Rudolf Weigl could work out in 1930 a method of production of vaccines practical and effective by using the broyat intestines of infected lice which had drunk blood. It was, however, very dangerous to produce, and presented a high risk of contamination for the scientists who worked with his manufacture.

A method surer and more adapted to the Mass production using embryonnés eggs was developed by Herald R. Cox in 1938. This vaccine was largely used since 1943.

History

Before the discovery of a vaccine during the second world war, typhus was a disease devastator for the human ones and was responsible for a certain number of epidemics through the history. These epidemics tend to follow the war S, the famine S and other circumstances which have like consequence of displacements of populations.

During the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 before JC), the City-State of Athens in the ancient Greece was struck by an epidemic devastator, was known under the name of Peste of Athens, which killed, inter alia, oldest Périclès and its two sons. The plague reappeared twice still, into 429 before JC and during winter 427/6 before JC. Epidemic typhus is one of the most probable causes for the origin of this epidemic, according to the doctors and the historians who studied the question.

The first description of typhus was probably made in 1083 in a convent close to Salerno, in Italy. In 1546, Girolamo Fracastoro, a doctor Florentin, described typhus in its famous treaty on the viruses and the contagion, Of Infects and Contagiosis Morbis .

The first reliable description of the disease appears during the Spanish seat of the city Moor of Grenade in 1489. These chronicles contain the description of a red fever and spots on the arms, the back and the thorax, an evolution towards is delirious, the gangrene of the wounds, the stink and the decomposition of the flesh. During the seat, the Spaniards lost 3.000 men with the combat but they entered 17.000 additional deaths because of typhus.

Typhus was also widespread in the prisons (where all the conditions of a proliferation of the louse X were joined together) and where it was known under the name of fever of the jails or of fever of the prisons . The fever of the jails is often declared when prisoners are piled up in obscure and crasseuses cells. The imprisonment until the next session of the court was often synonymous with a sentence of death. The disease was so contagious that the prisoners appearing before the court contaminated sometimes the court itself. After the bases held with Oxford in 1577, passed in the posterity under the name of black Bases, more than 300 people died of the Typhus, including Sir Robert Bell the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The epidemic which followed, between 1557 to 1559, killed approximately 10% of the English population . During the session of the Court of Assizes which was held with Taunton in 1730 typhus because with died of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as sheriff, of the sergeant, and several hundreds of other people. In the same time when 241 capital punishments were marked, he would die more prisoners of the “fever of the prisons” that during all the public executions perpetrated by the totality of the torturers of the kingdom. In 1759, the English authorities estimated that a quarter of the prisoners would die each year of the fever of the jails. With London, typhus frequently struck among the prisoners of the Prison of Newgate and was spread then in the population of the city.

The epidemics occurred everywhere in Europe XVIe century with the XIXe century, and during the First revolution English, the Guerre thirty year old and the Napoleonean wars. During the retirement of Russia of Napoleon i in 1812, one counted more soldiers French died of the typhuses that killed by the Russian army . An important epidemic occurred in Ireland between 1816 and 1819, and still at the end of 1830, but another major epidemic of typhus occurred during the Grande famine in Ireland between 1846 and 1849. Irish typhus was spread in England, where it sometimes was called “the Irish fever” and was announced by its virulence. It killed out of the people of all the social classes, since the lice were endemic and omnipresent, but it struck particularly hard the lower social classes known as “cankered”.

In America, an epidemic of typhus killed the son of Franklin Pierce with Concord, with the New Hampshire in 1843 and struck with Philadelphia in 1837. Several epidemics occurred with Baltimore in Maryland, with Memphis, Tennessee and Washington DC between 1865 and 1873. Typhus was also a frightening killer during the American Civil War in the USA, although the typhoid fever was the first cause of “fever of the camps” during the American civil war.

During the First World War, typhus resulted in the death of three million people in Russia and more still in Poland and Romania. Medical zones anti-lice were established for the troops on the Western face but the disease devastated the armies of the Eastern face, with more than 150.000 died in only Serbia. Mortality generally reached from 10 to 40 percent of the infected patients, and the disease exposed at the important risk of death those which dealt with the patients. Certain historians affirm that the disease can be used as model with the use of the biological weapons on the ground. Between 1918 and 1922, typhus involved at least 3 million death among 20 to 30 million patients. In Russia after the First World War, during the civil war between the white armed and the Red Army , typhus killed three million people, mainly civilians. Only the use with large scales of DDT lately discovered made it possible to avoid epidemics even more devastators in chaos of the post-war period in Europe. This product was used massively to kill the lice on million refugees and displaced persons.

During the second world war, typhus struck the German armed when it invaded the Russia in 1941. The epidemics of typhus killed out of the prisoners in the concentration camps of the Nazi Germany.

Random links:

Excommunication | Starfish | Aubois | Wizz (television game) | Jia Hooted