Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-25T21:28:20.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Epidemiology of Typhoid Fever: Observations on the Spontaneous Seasonal Recurrence of Paratyphoid Epidemics among Guinea-pigs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

I. J. Kligler
I. J. Kligler
Affiliation:
(Department of Hygiene, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

A series of spontaneous epidemics of a paratyphoid infection among guinea-pigs is described. It is shown that an epidemic may result from the introduction of a fresh susceptible population into an infected area and vice versa. Such epidemics developed only when the new population was exposed during certain months. The bringing in of a fresh population at the end of November was not followed at the time by an epidemic outbreak; the epidemic did not occur until the following July.

The observed seasonal occurrence was not due to a change in virulence. The strains isolated at the end of the 1926 epidemic did not differ in virulence from those cultivated at the height of the 1927 epidemic.

The guinea-pig may remain a carrier for a long time whilst eliminating bacteria in the faecal discharges only intermittently and in small numbers. In general, even in the case of infected animals, the discharge of pathogenic bacteria is relatively small, except a few days before death.

Attention is called to the parallelism between the seasonal prevalence of human typhoid epidemics in this country and the epidemics of paratyphoid observed in our guinea-pig stock.

It is pointed out that a sound theory of the epidemiology of certain diseases must take into account the seasonal variation in host susceptibility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Hygiene , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , July 1929 , pp. 146 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1929

References

REFERENCES

Amoss, H. (1922). J. Exper. Med. 36, 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, L. and Brody, L. (1926). Amer. J. Hyg. 6, 672.Google Scholar
Arnold, L.(1927). Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. and Med. 24, 832.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, W. H., Pearce, L. and Van Allen, C. M. (1924). Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. and Med. 21, 373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, W. H., (1925). J. Exper. Med. 42, 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flexner, S. (1922). J. Exper. Med. 36, 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, K. M. and Schutz, O. T. (1922). J. Infect. Dis. 30, 516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kligler, I. J. and Weitzman, I. (1926). J. Exper. Med. 44, 409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, J. B. and Smith, Th. (1927). J. Exper. Med. 45, 353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, B. G. H. (1924). J. Infect. Dis. 35, 407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Topley, W. W. C. (1919). Lancet, 2, 1, 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, L. T. (1924). Amer. J. Hyg. 4, 134.Google Scholar
Wherry, H. B. (1908). J. Infect. Dis. 5, 519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar