NEW YORK -- The disastrous effects of the Russian invasion on Napoleon Bonaparte's army is well known. Less widel known are the reasons for the defeat of the Grand Army. Although Russian resistance, brutal weather and the lack of food and water decimated the French army, new genetic evidence proves that Pediculus humanus, otherwise known as body lice, had a key role in the debacle.
Recently researchers led by Dr. Didier Raoult unearthed 2 kg of material containing bone fragments, clothing remnants, and segments of body lice from soldiers buried in a mass grave in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Analysis of the material proves that almost one-third of those buried there were affected by louse-born infections such as typhus and trench fever.
Raoult and his colleagues from the University of the Mediterranean, Marseille, France, studied segments of body lice as well as the dental pulp from soldiers' teeth. The dental pulp revealed DNA from Bartonella quintana and Rickettsia prowazekii, the agents that cause trench fever and epidemic typhus, respectively. When the DNA of such pathogens is present in teeth, the team concluded, it is very likely that the organism was the cause of death.