Trench fever

Trench fever is a moderately serious disease transmitted by body lice. It infected armies in Flanders, France, Poland, Galicia, Italy, Salonika, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in World War I^[1][2] (including J.R.R. Tolkien^[3]) and the German army in Russia during World War II.^[2] 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.^[1] The disease persists among the homeless.^[4] Outbreaks have been documented, for example, in Seattle and Baltimore in the United States among injection drug users and in Marseille, France and Burundi.

Trench fever is also called Wolhynia fever, shin bone fever, quintan fever, five-day fever, Meuse fever, His disease and His-Werner disease (after Wilhelm His, Jr. and Heinrich Werner).

The disease is caused by the bacterium Bartonella quintana (older names: Rochalimea quintana, Rickettsia quintana), found in the stomach walls of the body louse.^[2] Bartonella quintana is closely related to Bartonella henselae, the agent of cat scratch fever.

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Pathology and transmission

Bartonella quintana is transmitted by contamination of a skin abrasion or louse-bite wound with the faeces of an infected body louse (Pediculus humanus corporis). There have also been reports of an infected louse bite passing on the infection.^[2][5]

Symptoms

The disease is classically a five-day fever of the relapsing type, rarely with a continuous course instead. The latent period is relatively long, at about two weeks. The onset of symptoms is usually sudden with high fever, severe headache, pain on moving the eyeballs, soreness of the muscles of the legs and back, and frequently hyperaesthesia of the shins. The initial fever is usually followed in a few days by a single, short rise but there may be many relapses between periods without fever.^[5] The most constant symptom is pain in the legs.^[2] Recovery takes a month or more. Lethal cases are rare, but in a few cases "the persistent fever might lead to heart failure".^[5][3] After effects may include neurasthenia, cardiac disturbances and myalgia.^[5]

Diagnostics

Serological testing (e.g., the Weil-Felix test) is typically used to obtain a definitive diagnosis. Most serological tests would succeed only after a certain period of time past the symptom onset (usually a week). Differential diagnosis list includes typhus, ehrlichiosis, leptospirosis, Lyme disease and virus-caused exanthema (measles, rubella).

Treatment

Tetracycline-group antibiotics (doxycycline, tetracycline) are commonly used. Chloramphenicol is an alternative medication recommended under circumstances that render tetracycline derivates usage undesirable (such as severe liver malfunction, kidney deficiency, in children under nine years and pregnant women). The drug is administered for seven to ten days.

The treatment for bacillary angiomatosis is erythromycin given for three to four months.^[6]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Justina Hamilton Hill (1942). Silent Enemies: The Story of the Diseases of War and Their Control. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Francis Timoney, William Arthur Hagan (1973). Hagan and Bruner's Microbiology and Infectious Diseases of Domestic Animals. Cornell University Press. 
3. ^ ^{a b} John Garth (2003). Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. HarperCollins Publishers. 
4. ^ Milonakis, Eleftherios, and Michael A. Forgione. "Trench Fever." EMedicine. 26 June 2006. 11 June 2007 .
5. ^ ^{a b c d} Edward Rhodes Stitt (1922). The Diagnostics and treatment of tropical diseases. P. Blakiston's Son & Co.. 
6. ^ Beghari S, Rolain J-M, Grau GE, et al. (2006). "Antiangiogenic effect of erythromycin: an in vitro model of Bartonella quintana infection". J Infect Dis 193 (3): 380–6.