A genomic study of epidemic dysentery: how Europe exported a scourge worldwide

Scientists at the Institut Pasteur and its International Network, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, United Kingdom) and several international institutions have just published an exceptionally wide-ranging study tracing the history of the bacillus responsible for epidemic dysentery - one of the worst scourges to afflict humans throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

This vast scientific investigation has uncovered hitherto unknown links between the various outbreaks that have occurred through history. In particular, it reveals that the pathogen currently raging through Africa and Asia probably originated in Europe and was transmitted from one continent to another via migratory movements and military operations.

It also charts the development of the pathogen’s inexorable resistance to antibiotics.

This study is published in the journal Nature Microbiology on March 21.

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