54 posts · 42,609 views
Contagions is place to collect some thoughts on history, infectious disease and science in general. My primary interests are in the history of plague, and the impact of malaria, smallpox, and yellow fever on the Americas.
Michelle Ziegler
54 posts
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- February 21, 2011
- 01:46 AM
- 1,419 views
Clonal origins of Haiti’s Cholera epidemic
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
Haiti had been free of cholera for 50 years when the earthquake struck in January 2010. The destruction of Haiti’s infrastructure by the earthquake made it vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks but it was hoped that cholera would pass it by. As we all know by now, this unfortunately has not the case. Cholera has [...]... Read more »
Afsar Ali, Yuansha Chen, Judith A. Johnson, Edsel Redden, Yfto Mayette, Mohammed H. Rashid, O. Colin Stine, and J. Glenn Morris, Jr. (2011) Recent Clonal Origin of Cholera in Haiti. Emerging Infectious Disease, 17(4 -- April). info:/10.3201/eid1704.101973
Enserink M. (2011) Epidemiology. Despite sensitivities, scientists seek to solve Haiti's cholera riddle. Science (New York, N.Y.), 331(6016), 388-9. PMID: 21273460
- February 6, 2011
- 12:40 AM
- 1,002 views
Insights into the pathogenesis of the Spanish Flu
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
One of the enduring mysteries of influenza is why the 1918 H1N1 influenza, better known as the Spanish Flu, was so unusually deadly. The 2009 H1N1 influenza was certainly capable of creating a pandemic but was not nearly as deadly. Granted most of the fatalities in 1918 had bacterial pneumonia that could probably have been [...]... Read more »
Watanabe, T., & Kawaoka, Y. (2011) Pathogenesis of the 1918 Pandemic Influenza Virus. PLoS Pathogens, 7(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1001218
- January 23, 2011
- 12:28 AM
- 976 views
Uganda’s 2006 Plague Outbreak
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
People are sometimes surprised to learn that the plague still exists today. They ask me why they have never heard about it in the news. Well, it is occasionally in the news for a day and then we go on to the next crisis. Today plague outbreaks occur in parts of the world that don’t [...]... Read more »
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2009) Bubonic and pneumonic plague - Uganda, 2006. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 58(28), 778-81. PMID: 19629028
- January 17, 2011
- 12:20 AM
- 1,039 views
Plague DNA from Late Antique Bavaria
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
The first plague pandemic was not recorded in Bavaria, or anywhere in the Germanic territory that I am aware of. The grave was not a typical ‘plague pit’. It was a rich grave of an adult woman and a young girl (individuals 166 and 167) from a cemetery in Aschheim, Bavaria. With no visible signs [...]... Read more »
Wiechmann I, & Grupe G. (2005) Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in two early medieval skeletal finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th century A.D.). American journal of physical anthropology, 126(1), 48-55. PMID: 15386257
Bianucci, R., Rahalison, L., Massa, E., Peluso, A., Ferroglio, E., & Signoli, M. (2008) Technical note: A rapid diagnostic test detects plague in ancient human remains: An example of the interaction between archeological and biological approaches (southeastern France, 16th–18th centuries). American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 136(3), 361-367. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20818
Pusch CM, Rahalison L, Blin N, Nicholson GJ, & Czarnetzki A. (2004) Yersinial F1 antigen and the cause of Black Death. The Lancet infectious diseases, 4(8), 484-5. PMID: 15288817
- January 3, 2011
- 07:00 AM
- 919 views
Epidemiology of the Russian flu, 1889-1890
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
In an effort to extend the data set for influenza pandemic planning, Valleron, Cori, Meurisse, Carrat, and Boëlle gathered data from 15 countries in the northern hemisphere that experienced the ‘Russian flu’ pandemic in the winter of 1889-1890. The pandemic was first recorded in St. Petersburg, Russia. Within a mere four months it had spread [...]... Read more »
Valleron AJ, Cori A, Valtat S, Meurisse S, Carrat F, & Boëlle PY. (2010) Transmissibility and geographic spread of the 1889 influenza pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(19), 8778-81. PMID: 20421481
- December 31, 2010
- 05:54 PM
- 1,023 views
Pandemic Influenza: 1510 – 2010
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
My first clue on the existence of specific influenza pandemics before 1918 came a few years ago while reading some local newspapers on the Spanish Flu itself. The papers were warning people that this was not an ordinary flu year, it would be like 1893! The papers referred to 1893 in the same way that [...]... Read more »
Morens, D., Taubenberger, J., Folkers, G., & Fauci, A. (2010) Pandemic Influenza’s 500th Anniversary. Clinical Infectious Diseases. DOI: 10.1086/657429
Morens DM, & Taubenberger JK. (2010) An avian outbreak associated with panzootic equine influenza in 1872: an early example of highly pathogenic avian influenza?. Influenza and other respiratory viruses, 4(6), 373-7. PMID: 20958931
Morens DM, North M, & Taubenberger JK. (2010) Eyewitness accounts of the 1510 influenza pandemic in Europe. Lancet, 376(9756), 1894-5. PMID: 21155080
- December 27, 2010
- 07:00 AM
- 980 views
Defining pandemic
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
Defining a pandemic is not an easy thing to do. It turns out that there has never really been much consensus about what constitutes a pandemic. The term pandemic has been used almost interchangeably with epidemic since the beginning of its usage. In the midst of responding to last year’s H1N1 influenza outbreak public health [...]... Read more »
Morens, D., Folkers, G., & Fauci, A. (2009) What Is a Pandemic?. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 200(7), 1018-1021. DOI: 10.1086/644537
- October 31, 2010
- 05:43 PM
- 654 views
The Vampire in the Plague Pit
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
Amid the chaos of a mass grave of plague victims, the 2006-2007 summer project team from the Archeoclub of Venice got a surprise. Among the dead they found evidence of belief in the undead, fear of the vampire. So how do you stop the undead from feasting on the corpses in the mass grave? The [...]... Read more »
Nuzzolese E, & Borrini M. (2010) Forensic Approach to an Archaeological Casework of "Vampire" Skeletal Remains in Venice: Odontological and Anthropological Prospectus*. Journal of forensic sciences. PMID: 20707834
- October 17, 2010
- 02:00 AM
- 856 views
More aDNA from the Black Death
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
An international team has confirmed Yersinia pestis biomolecules in Black Death era* ‘plague pits’ (Haensch et al., 2010). Ancient DNA (aDNA) specific for Yersinia pestis and the Yersinial F1 antigen were discovered in skeletons from recognized plague pits in the Netherlands, England, and France. German and Italian skeletons tested positive for Y. pestis [...]... Read more »
Haensch, S., Bianucci, R., Signoli, M., Rajerison, M., Schultz, M., Kacki, S., Vermunt, M., Weston, D., Hurst, D., Achtman, M., Carniel, E., and Bramanti, B. (2010) Distinct clones of Yersinia pestis caused the Black Death. PLoS Pathogens, 6(10). info:/
Pusch CM, Rahalison L, Blin N, Nicholson GJ, & Czarnetzki A. (2004) Yersinial F1 antigen and the cause of Black Death. The Lancet infectious diseases, 4(8), 484-5. PMID: 15288817
- September 3, 2010
- 05:00 AM
- 1,059 views
Plague among the nuts
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
David Woods was looking at the early Irish chronicles and he noticed something very odd. There are clusters of entries recording large mast crops. Mast? In Ireland, that would be mostly acorns.. In these sparse annals that normally only record battles, deaths, and other major events, why record large acorn falls? The only typical use [...]... Read more »
David Woods. (2003) Acorns, the Plague, and the 'Iona Chronicle'. Peritia, 495-502. info:/
- June 17, 2010
- 01:51 AM
- 828 views
Beyond Pelusium
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
The origins of the first plague pandemic have always been something of a mystery. The plague is first reported in mid-July 541 at the Egyptian port of Pelusium, a secondary port on the eastern end of the Nile delta. From Pelusium it spread both east to the Levant and west to Alexandria where it hopped [...]... Read more »
Tsiamis C, Poulakou-Rebelakou E, & Petridou E. (2009) The Red Sea and the port of Clysma. A possible gate of Justinian's plague. Gesnerus, 66(2), 209-17. PMID: 20405770
- May 26, 2010
- 05:30 PM
- 738 views
Plague in 18th century Egypt
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
Egypt should hold a special place in historical plague research. Plague returned to Egypt on a regular basis for at least 1300 years. The first plague pandemic was first reported in Egypt in c. 541 and consistently reappeared through the 19th century. Alan Mikhail's study (1) on 18th century Ottoman Egypt brings up a number of questions on the nature of plague persistence and transmission. Mikhail argues that plague was a regular feature in an environmental pattern of flood, plague, famine ........ Read more »
Tarantola A, Mollet T, Gueguen J, Barboza P, & Bertherat E. (2009) Plague outbreak in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Euro surveillance : bulletin europeen sur les maladies transmissibles , 14(26). PMID: 19573511
- February 17, 2010
- 09:34 AM
- 717 views
Malaria and the Boy Pharaoh
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
A discussion of a medical analysis of several Egyptian mummies including 'King Tut'... Read more »
Hawass Z, Gad YZ, Ismail S, Khairat R, Fathalla D, Hasan N, Ahmed A, Elleithy H, Ball M, Gaballah F.... (2010) Ancestry and pathology in King Tutankhamun's family. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association, 303(7), 638-47. PMID: 20159872
- December 20, 2009
- 08:30 AM
- 486 views
Lincoln's Illness at Gettysburg
by Michelle Ziegler in Contagions
A discussion of Abraham Lincoln's illness at Gettysburg. ... Read more »
Goldman AS, & Schmalstieg FC Jr. (2007) Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg illness. Journal of medical biography, 15(2), 104-10. PMID: 17551612
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