According to a new report published this week, the disease of the trench fever, which was transmitted between soldiers during the First World War, reappears among the homeless. In the study, doctors report the case of a homeless man, 48, who developed a severe heart infection after being infected with this bacterial disease in Manitoba, Canada.
Trench fever is a disease transmitted by lice and caused by the bacteria Bartonella quintana. It can appear several times in the same individual and remains present for about five days. Apart from fever, this disease can cause other symptoms including rash, headache, pain in the leg and shin.
This is during the World War One when the disease was discovered, it was called “trench fever”. At that time, the disease wreaked havoc among the soldiers: more than a million were infected between 1915 and 1918. The disease spread particularly quickly among the combatants, whose heads were often full of lice and the living conditions were dire.
Rarely fatal, it considerably weakens soldiers who sometimes cannot fight for months. If left untreated, it can causeendocarditis, severe inflammation of the wall of the heart valves.
Urban trench fever
While the disease is now well treated with the administration of an antibiotic developed ten years after the Great War, scientists nevertheless note an increase in the number of homeless people suffering from trench fever. since the 1990s. Faced with this worrying phenomenon, some want to rename the disease “Urban trench fever”.
Recently, a growing number of studies have highlighted cases of homeless people infected with the bacterium Bartonella quintana. If the recent study shows a Canadian patient who may have been pulled out of the woods, a Californian study published in May explains that a homeless man died as a result of complications from the disease.
The fact that homeless people are now dying from trench fever proves the lack of resources they suffer from. Indeed, the complications related to this disease can be perfectly avoided if antibiotics are administered and if the lice are treated.
The authors of the study recommend that people in great precariousness have better access to treatment against lice, as well as better conditions in foster homes. In addition, healthcare workers should check more closely for the presence of Bartonella quintana in patients who have been infected with lice for a long time. According to Philippe RS Lagacé-Wiens, one of the authors of the study, “To successfully prevent this disease, we must end homelessness and poverty”.
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