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History of typhoid fever

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        Incidence of typhoid fever
   Strongly endemic
   Endemic
   Sporadic cases

In 2000, typhoid fever caused an estimated 21.7 million illnesses and 217,000 deaths.[1] It occurs most often in children and young adults between 5 and 19 years old.[2] In 2013, it resulted in about 161,000 deaths – down from 181,000 in 1990.[3] Infants, children, and adolescents in south-central and Southeast Asia experience the greatest burden of illness.[4] Outbreaks of typhoid fever are also frequently reported from sub-Saharan Africa and countries in Southeast Asia.[5][6][7] In the United States, about 400 cases occur each year, and 75% of these are acquired while traveling internationally.[8][9]

Historically, before the antibiotic era, the case fatality rate of typhoid fever was 10–20%. Today, with prompt treatment, it is less than 1%.[10] However, about 3–5% of individuals who are infected develop a chronic infection in the gall bladder.[11] Since S. e. subsp. enterica is human-restricted, these chronic carriers become the crucial reservoir, which can persist for decades for further spread of the disease, further complicating the identification and treatment of the disease.[12] Lately, the study of S. e. subsp. enterica associated with a large outbreak and a carrier at the genome level provides new insights into the pathogenesis of the pathogen.[13][14]

In industrialized nations, water sanitation and food handling improvements have reduced the number of cases.[15] Developing nations, such as those found in parts of Asia and Africa, have the highest rates of typhoid fever. These areas have a lack of access to clean water, proper sanitation systems, and proper health-care facilities. For these areas, such access to basic public-health needs is not in the near future.[16]

Ancient Greece

In 430 BC, a plague, which some believe to have been typhoid fever, killed one-third of the population of Athens, including their leader Pericles. Following this disaster, the balance of power shifted from Athens to Sparta, ending the Golden Age of Pericles that had marked Athenian dominance in the Greek ancient world. The ancient historian Thucydides also contracted the disease, but he survived to write about the plague. His writings are the primary source of information on this outbreak, and modern academics and medical scientists consider typhoid fever the most likely cause. In 2006, a study detected DNA sequences similar to those of the bacterium responsible for typhoid fever in dental pulp extracted from a burial pit dated to the time of the outbreak.[17]

The cause of the plague has long been disputed and other scientists have disputed the findings, citing serious methodologic flaws in the dental pulp-derived DNA study.[18] The disease is most commonly transmitted through poor hygiene habits and public sanitation conditions; during the period in question related to Athens above, the whole population of Attica was besieged within the Long Walls and lived in tents.[citation needed]

16th and 17th centuries

A pair of epidemics struck the Mexican highlands in 1545 and 1576, causing an estimated 7 to 17 million deaths.[19] A study published in 2018 suggests that the cause was typhoid fever.[20][21]

Some historians believe that the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia, died out from typhoid. Typhoid fever killed more than 6,000 settlers in the New World between 1607 and 1624.[22]

Nineteenth century

A long-held belief is that 9th US President William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia, but recent studies suggest he likely died from typhoid.

This disease may also have been a contributing factor in the death of 12th US President Zachary Taylor due to the unsanitary conditions in Washington, DC, in the mid-19th century.[23][24]

During the American Civil War, 81,360 Union soldiers died of typhoid or dysentery, far more than died of battle wounds.[25] In the late 19th century, the typhoid fever mortality rate in Chicago averaged 65 per 100,000 people a year. The worst year was 1891, when the typhoid death rate was 174 per 100,000 people.[26]

During the Spanish–American War, American troops were exposed to typhoid fever in stateside training camps and overseas, largely due to inadequate sanitation systems. The Surgeon General of the Army, George Miller Sternberg, suggested that the War Department create a Typhoid Fever Board. Major Walter Reed, Edward O. Shakespeare, and Victor C. Vaughan were appointed August 18, 1898, with Reed being designated the president of the board. The Typhoid Board determined that during the war, more soldiers died from this disease than from yellow fever or from battle wounds. The board promoted sanitary measures including latrine policy, disinfection, camp relocation, and water sterilization, but by far the most successful antityphoid method was vaccination, which became compulsory in June 1911 for all federal troops.[27]

Twentieth century

Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary") in a hospital bed (foreground): She was forcibly quarantined as a carrier of typhoid fever in 1907 for three years and then again from 1915 until her death in 1938.
Original stool report for Mary Mallon, 1907.

In 1902, guests at mayoral banquets in Southampton and Winchester, England, became ill and four died, including the Dean of Winchester, after consuming oysters. The infection was due to oysters sourced from Emsworth, where the oyster beds had been contaminated with raw sewage.[28][29]

The most notorious carrier of typhoid fever, but by no means the most destructive, was Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary. In 1907, she became the first carrier in the United States to be identified and traced. She was a cook in New York, who was closely associated with 53 cases and three deaths.[30] Public-health authorities told Mary to give up working as a cook or have her gall bladder removed, as she had a chronic infection that kept her active as a carrier of the disease. Mary quit her job, but returned later under a false name. She was detained and quarantined after another typhoid outbreak. She died of pneumonia after 26 years in quarantine.[citation needed]

A notable outbreak occurred in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1964, due to contaminated tinned meat sold at the city's branch of the William Low chain of stores. No fatalities resulted.[citation needed]

Twenty-first century

In 2004–05 an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo resulted in more than 42,000 cases and 214 deaths.[2] Since November 2016, Pakistan has had an outbreak of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) typhoid fever.[31]

References

  1. ^ Crump JA, Mintz ED (January 2010). "Global trends in typhoid and paratyphoid Fever". Clinical Infectious Diseases. 50 (2): 241–6. doi:10.1086/649541. PMC 2798017. PMID 20014951.
  2. ^ a b "Typhoid Fever". World Health Organization. Archived from the original on 2011-11-02. Retrieved 2007-08-28.
  3. ^ GBD 2013 Mortality Causes of Death Collaborators (January 2015). "Global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013". Lancet. 385 (9963): 117–71. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61682-2. PMC 4340604. PMID 25530442. {{cite journal}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Crump JA, Luby SP, Mintz ED (2004). "The global burden of typhoid fever". Bull World Health Organ. 82 (5): 346–353. PMC 2622843. PMID 15298225.
  5. ^ Muyembe-Tamfum JJ, Veyi J, Kaswa M, Lunguya O, Verhaegen J, Boelaert M (January 2009). "An outbreak of peritonitis caused by multidrug-resistant Salmonella Typhi in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo". Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease. 7 (1): 40–3. doi:10.1016/j.tmaid.2008.12.006. PMID 19174300.
  6. ^ Baddam R, Kumar N, Thong KL, Ngoi ST, Teh CS, Yap KP, et al. (July 2012). "Genetic fine structure of a Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strain associated with the 2005 outbreak of typhoid fever in Kelantan, Malaysia". Journal of Bacteriology. 194 (13): 3565–6. doi:10.1128/jb.00581-12. PMC 3434757. PMID 22689247.
  7. ^ Yap KP, Teh CS, Baddam R, Chai LC, Kumar N, Avasthi TS, et al. (September 2012). "Insights from the genome sequence of a Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strain associated with a sporadic case of typhoid fever in Malaysia". Journal of Bacteriology. 194 (18): 5124–5. doi:10.1128/jb.01062-12. PMC 3430317. PMID 22933756.
  8. ^ Matano, Leigh M.; Morris, Heidi G.; Wood, B. McKay; Meredith, Timothy C.; Walker, Suzanne (December 15, 2016). "Accelerating the discovery of antibacterial compounds using pathway-directed whole cell screening". Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry. 24 (24): 6307–6314. doi:10.1016/j.bmc.2016.08.003. ISSN 1464-3391. PMC 5180449. PMID 27594549.
  9. ^ http://www.floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/disease-reporting-and-management/disease-reporting-and-surveillance/_documents/gsi-typhoid-fever.pdf
  10. ^ Heymann, David L., ed. (2008), Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, Washington, D.C.: American Public Health Association, pg 665. ISBN 978-0-87553-189-2.
  11. ^ Levine MM, Black RE, Lanata C (December 1982). "Precise estimation of the numbers of chronic carriers of Salmonella typhi in Santiago, Chile, an endemic area". The Journal of Infectious Diseases. 146 (6): 724–6. doi:10.1093/infdis/146.6.724. PMID 7142746.
  12. ^ Gonzalez-Escobedo G, Marshall JM, Gunn JS (January 2011). "Chronic and acute infection of the gall bladder by Salmonella Typhi: understanding the carrier state". Nature Reviews. Microbiology. 9 (1): 9–14. doi:10.1038/nrmicro2490. PMC 3255095. PMID 21113180.
  13. ^ Yap KP, Gan HM, Teh CS, Baddam R, Chai LC, Kumar N, et al. (November 2012). "Genome sequence and comparative pathogenomics analysis of a Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhi strain associated with a typhoid carrier in Malaysia". Journal of Bacteriology. 194 (21): 5970–1. doi:10.1128/jb.01416-12. PMC 3486090. PMID 23045488.
  14. ^ Yap KP, Gan HM, Teh CS, Chai LC, Thong KL (November 2014). "Comparative genomics of closely related Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strains reveals genome dynamics and the acquisition of novel pathogenic elements". BMC Genomics. 15 (1): 1007. doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-1007. PMC 4289253. PMID 25412680.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  15. ^ Crump JA, Sjölund-Karlsson M, Gordon MA, Parry CM (October 2015). "Epidemiology, Clinical Presentation, Laboratory Diagnosis, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Antimicrobial Management of Invasive Salmonella Infections". Clinical Microbiology Reviews. 28 (4): 901–37. doi:10.1128/CMR.00002-15. PMC 4503790. PMID 26180063.
  16. ^ Khan MI, Pach A, Khan GM, Bajracharya D, Sahastrabuddhe S, Bhutta W, et al. (June 2015). "Typhoid vaccine introduction: An evidence-based pilot implementation project in Nepal and Pakistan". Vaccine. 33 Suppl 3: C62-7. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.03.087. PMID 25937612.
  17. ^ Papagrigorakis MJ, Yapijakis C, Synodinos PN, Baziotopoulou-Valavani E (May 2006). "DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens". International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 10 (3): 206–14. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2005.09.001. PMID 16412683.
  18. ^ Shapiro B, Rambaut A, Gilbert MT (July 2006). "No proof that typhoid caused the Plague of Athens (a reply to Papagrigorakis et al.)". International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 10 (4): 334–5, author reply 335–6. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2006.02.006. PMID 16730469.
  19. ^ Acuna-Soto R, Stahle DW, Cleaveland MK, Therrell MD (April 2002). "Megadrought and megadeath in 16th century Mexico". Emerging Infectious Diseases. 8 (4): 360–2. doi:10.3201/eid0804.010175. PMC 2730237. PMID 11971767.
  20. ^ Hersher, Rebecca (2018-01-15). "Salmonella May Have Caused Massive Aztec Epidemic, Study Finds". NRP. Retrieved 2018-01-15.
  21. ^ Vågene ÅJ, Herbig A, Campana MG, Robles García NM, Warinner C, Sabin S, et al. (March 2018). "Salmonella enterica genomes from victims of a major sixteenth-century epidemic in Mexico". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 2 (3): 520–528. doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0446-6. PMID 29335577.
  22. ^ Byrne, Joseph Patrick (2008). Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues: A-M. ABC-CLIO. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-313-34102-1. Archived from the original on 2014-01-03.
  23. ^ McHugh J, Mackowiak PA (October 2014). "Death in the White House: President William Henry Harrison's Atypical Pneumonia". Clinical Infectious Diseases. 59 (7): 990–5. doi:10.1093/cid/ciu470. PMID 24962997.
  24. ^ Mchugh, Jane; Mackowiak, Philip A. (2014-03-31). "What Really Killed William Henry Harrison?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2017-01-20. Retrieved 2017-01-19.
  25. ^ Armies of Pestilence: The Effects of Pandemics on History Archived 2016-04-28 at the Wayback Machine. James Clarke & Co. (2004). p.191. ISBN 0-227-17240-X
  26. ^ "1900 Flow of Chicago River Reversed". Chicago Timeline. Chicago Public Library. Archived from the original on 2007-03-07. Retrieved 2007-02-08.
  27. ^ "Walter Reed Typhoid Fever, 1897–1911". Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2014-09-03., Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. University of Virginia.
  28. ^ "Emsworth Oysters". Emsworth Business Association. 10 February 2019. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016.
  29. ^ Bulstrode, H. Timbrell (1903). "Dr. H. Timbrell Bulstrode's report to the Local Government Board upon alleged oyster-borne enteric fever and other illness following the mayoral banquets at Winchester and Southampton, and upon enteric fever occurring simultaneously elsewhere and also ascribed to oysters". London: HMSO: 1. Archived from the original on 7 July 2019. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  30. ^ "Nova: The Most Dangerous Woman in America". Archived from the original on 2010-04-26.
  31. ^ "Extensively Drug-Resistant Typhoid Fever in Pakistan". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 30 September 2019.
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