| Trench fever | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Wolhynia fever, shin bone fever, Meuse fever, His disease, and His–Werner disease |
| Specialty | Infectious diseases, military medicine  |
| Symptoms | fever |
| Duration | 5 days |
| Causes | infected insect bite |
| Prevention | body hygiene |
| Medication | Tetracycline-group antibiotics |
| Deaths | Rare |
Trench fever (also known as "five-day fever", "quintan fever" (Latin: febris quintana), and "urban trench fever"[1]) is a moderately serious disease transmitted by body lice. It infected armies in Flanders, France, Poland, Galicia, Italy, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, Russia and Egypt in World War I.[2][3] Three noted cases during WWI were the authors J. R. R. Tolkien,[4] A. A. Milne,[5] and C. S. Lewis.[6] From 1915 to 1918 between one-fifth and one-third of all British troops reported ill had trench fever while about one-fifth of ill German and Austrian troops had the disease.[2] The disease persists among the homeless.[7] Outbreaks have been documented, for example, in Seattle[8] and Baltimore in the United States among injection drug users[9] and in Marseille, France,[8] and Burundi.[10]
Trench fever is also called Wolhynia fever, shin bone fever, Meuse fever, His disease, and His–Werner disease or Werner-His disease (after Wilhelm His Jr. and Heinrich Werner).[11]
The disease is caused by the bacterium Bartonella quintana (older names: Rochalimea quintana, Rickettsia quintana), found in the stomach walls of the body louse.[3] Bartonella quintana is closely related to Bartonella henselae, the agent of cat scratch fever and bacillary angiomatosis.
- ^ Rapini, Ronald P.; Bolognia, Jean L.; Jorizzo, Joseph L. (2007). Dermatology: 2-Volume Set. St. Louis: Mosby. p. 1095. ISBN 978-1-4160-2999-1.
- ^ a b Hill, Justina Hamilton (1942). Silent Enemies: The Story of the Diseases of War and Their Control. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
- ^ a b Timoney, Francis; William Arthur Hagan (1973). Hagan and Bruner's Microbiology and Infectious Diseases of Domestic Animals. Cornell University Press.
- ^ Garth, John (2003). Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. HarperCollins Publishers.
- ^ Carpenter, Humphrey; Mari Prichard (1984). The Oxford companion to children's literature. Oxford University Press. p. 351. ISBN 9780192115829.
- ^ Lewis, C. S. (1955). Surprised By Joy. Harcourt.
- ^ Perloff, Sarah (17 January 2020). "Trench Fever". EMedicine.
- ^ a b Ohl, M. E.; Spach, D. H. (1 July 2000). "Bartonella quintana and Urban Trench Fever". Clinical Infectious Diseases. 31 (1): 131–135. doi:10.1086/313890. PMID 10913410.
- ^ Comer, James A. (25 November 1996). "Antibodies to Bartonella Species in Inner-city Intravenous Drug Users in Baltimore, Md". Archives of Internal Medicine. 156 (21): 2491–5. doi:10.1001/archinte.1996.00440200111014. PMID 8944742.
- ^ Raoult, D; Ndihokubwayo, JB; Tissot-Dupont, H; Roux, V; Faugere, B; Abegbinni, R; Birtles, RJ (1998). "Outbreak of epidemic typhus associated with trench fever in Burundi". The Lancet. 352 (9125): 353–358. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(97)12433-3. PMID 9717922. S2CID 25814472.
- ^ "Trench Fever". MSD Manual. Retrieved 30 May 2023.