Typhus (2024)

FAQs

What is typhus called today? ›

Epidemic typhus. Epidemic typhus has also been called camp fever, jail fever, and war fever, names that suggest overcrowding, underwashing, and lowered standards of living. It is caused by the bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii and is conveyed from person to person by the body louse, Pediculus humanus humanus.

What is Typhus? Typhus is a disease caused by rickettsia or orientia bacteria. You can get it from infected mites, fleas, or lice. Modern hygiene has mostly stopped typhus, but it can still happen in places where basic sanitation is bad or if it gets passed on by an infected animal.

Typhus fevers include murine typhus, epidemic typhus and scrub typhus. Fleas spread murine typhus, body lice spread epidemic typhus, and chiggers spread scrub typhus. The most common symptoms are fever, headaches, and sometimes rash.

Treatment. Epidemic typhus should be treated with the antibiotic doxycycline. Doxycycline can be used in persons of any age. Antibiotics are most effective when given soon after symptoms begin.

People with epidemic typhus who receive treatment quickly should completely recover. Without treatment, death can occur, with those over age 60 having the highest risk of death. Only a small number of untreated people with murine typhus may die.

From 1918 to 1922 it swept from Serbia through Russia and surrounding countries - the Eastern Front of The Great War - causing an estimated 30,000,000 cases and 3,000,000 deaths. It was not seen in France or Belgium, the Western Front.

Typhus is not transmitted from person to person like a cold or the flu. There are three different types of typhus, and each type is caused by a different type of bacterium and transmitted by a different type of arthropod.

Infectious diseases most often cited as causes of the plague include influenza, epidemic typhus, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, smallpox, and measles. Thucydides provides the only available description of the plague of Athens.

You can catch typhus if you're bitten by infected lice, mites or fleas. These are often found on small animals like mice, rats, cats, dogs, and squirrels. People can also carry them on their clothes, skin or hair.

These included mass selection for the gas chambers of people with symptoms of typhus, more frequent fumigation of clothing, the disinfection of barracks, and showers for prisoners. The typhus epidemic was not brought under control until 1944.

Is typhus the same as typhoid? ›

Typhus and typhoid fever have both been in the news as reported cases surface in Los Angeles. Although the names of these infections are almost identical—and their symptoms are very similar—they are completely different diseases.

Paleomicrobiology enabled the identification of the first outbreak of epidemic typhus in the 18th century in the context of a pan-European great war in the city of Douai, France, and supported the hypothesis that typhus was imported into Europe by Spanish soldiers returning from America.

Typhus is the term for a group of rare bacterial infections that people can contract after being bitten by an infected insect. Treatment for typhus typically involves antibiotic medications. In the past, typhus killed millions of people. Today, the disease is rare due to improvements in healthcare and sanitation.

Typhus Facts

Throughout history, typhus has been responsible for millions of deaths. Types of typhus include scrub typhus, murine or endemic typhus, and epidemic typhus. Bacteria of the Rickettsia family causes typhus, and arthropods (chiggers, lice, mites, or fleas) spread the bacteria to humans.

Disease is spread by human body lice infected with the bacteria that cause epidemic typhus fever. The disease is most common during the winter, when conditions favor person-to-person spread of body lice. Human body lice become infected when they feed on the blood of a person with epidemic typhus fever.

Both diseases are infections, but they're caused by different types of bacteria that are spread in different ways. The kind of typhus we tend to see in the U.S. is spread by fleas that catch the disease from rats and opossums. Typhoid fever is spread through food that's come into contact with fecal bacteria.

In historical times, "jail fever" or "gaol fever" was common in English prisons, and is believed by modern authorities to have been typhus. It often occurred when prisoners were crowded together into dark, filthy rooms where lice spread easily.

Typhus is not transmitted from person to person like a cold or the flu. There are three different types of typhus, and each type is caused by a different type of bacterium and transmitted by a different type of arthropod.