Posted on 04/11/2011 2:26:01 PM PDT by decimon
French Canadian voyageurs spread tuberculosis throughout the indigenous peoples of western Canada for over 150 years, yet, strangely enough, it wasn't until the fur traders ceased their forays that epidemics of tuberculosis broke out. Now Stanford researchers have puzzled out why. It took a shift in the environment of the infected peoples – in this case, confinement to reservations – to create conditions conducive to outbreaks.
Patience may be a virtue in a person, but in an infectious disease, it is insidious. Witness tuberculosis, which can lie dormant in a human host for decades before bursting forth into infection. TB's stealthy nature has made it difficult to decipher how it spreads, seriously hampering efforts to control it. The World Health Organization estimates that a third of the people on Earth are infected.
Now, a study led by Stanford scientists has provided new insights into the behavior of tuberculosis by tracing the travels of a particular strain of the disease that was unintentionally spread among the indigenous peoples of western Canada by French Canadian voyageurs during the fur trade era. Although the disease was probably brought into the native populations repeatedly from about 1710 to 1870, it didn't spark an epidemic until the fur trade had largely ended, more than 150 years from when it was first introduced.
"We found there was this widespread, low-level dispersal of tuberculosis that did not become obvious until environmental changes occurred that created conditions conducive to epidemics," said Caitlin Pepperell, an infectious diseases specialist at Stanford.
The process, she said, resembles the way a smoldering fire can spread underground, through the roots of trees and brush, then burst into fire without warning.
"Tuberculosis epidemics are the outcomes of a process that has effectively been occurring underground," she said – unlike smallpox, which quickly escalates into epidemics.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.stanford.edu ...
Ping
It’s a third world thing. Avoid becoming run down, exhausted.
Does this have anything to do with beavers and disease?
Tuberculosis used to be quite widespread in Europe. In the past it was called "consumption" for want of a real understanding of the cause of the disease. It was also prevalent in America in the 17th through early and mid twentieth century. I remember getting tested in grade school (skin test) and when I joined the Air Force for tuberculosis.
America and Europe brought tuberculosis under control and virtually eliminated it by the use of new antibiotics and quarantining the infected in places called "sanitoriums." Confinement was usually involuntary until the infected person was noncontagious.
New sepsis discovery goes straight to the heart to save lives (many lives)
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Sort of like the over crowded conditions in places like LA and NY where "immigrants" live?
The Air Force has resumed testing for Tuberculosis again in the last few years, a testament to its resurgence.
I have only myself to blame as I am descended from a passel of French voyageurs!
High altitudes and dry air seemed to be the prescription / belief right up into the 20th century. Nixon’s brother died of TB I think, in a sanitarium in AZ or NM.
Harold Nixon became ill with tuberculosis in 1927. Richard Nixon attributed this to his father's insistence on serving raw milk. When his condition worsened in the spring of 1928, his mother left her two surviving younger children (Arthur had died three years earlier) with their father in Whittier, California and travelled 400 miles to Prescott, Arizona, where the weather was better for Harold's condition. He died on his mother's, Hannah Milhous Nixon, birthday.
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