Overview
- In a Current Biology study, four of 13 sampled soldiers carried Salmonella enterica Paratyphi C, consistent with paratyphoid fever, and two carried Borrelia recurrentis, which causes louse-borne relapsing fever.
- Researchers did not detect the typhus bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii in these 13 individuals, though earlier work on different remains from the site found evidence of typhus and trench fever.
- The team used unbiased shotgun sequencing of dental pulp to recover ancient pathogen DNA, enabling detection beyond targets of older PCR-era tests.
- The remains came from a Vilnius, Lithuania mass grave discovered in 2001 that holds roughly 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers from Napoleon’s retreat.
- Authors caution that the sample is small and localized and call for larger, geographically broader surveys to map the full disease landscape of the 1812 campaign.