Five millennia of <i>Bartonella quintana</i> bacteremia
Journal: bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Year: 2020

ABSTRACT Bartonella quintana caused trench fever in the framework of two World Wars and is now recognized as an agent of re-emerging infection. Many reports indicated the popularity of B. quintana exposure since the 90s. For evaluating its prevalence in ancient populations, we used real-time PCR to detect B. quintana DNA in 400 teeth collected from 145 individuals dating from the 1st to 19th centuries in nine archeological sites with the presence of negative controls. Fisher’s exact test was use