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A Dysentery Sample From A WWI Soldier Sheds Light On Drug Resistance : Goats and Soda : NPR
by thenewgreen

    In the early months of World War I, British Pvt. Ernest Cable was a member of the 2nd Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. Records show that in early 1915, his regiment was fighting in the trenches of Flanders, Belgium.

    But by March of that year, Cable, 28, was in a hospital in the northern French coastal town of Wimereux. On the 13th he died from dysentery, a diarrheal disease caused by the bacterium Shigella flexneri. Spread by poor hygiene and lack of sanitation, dysentery stalked the water-logged trenches of WWI, killing hundreds of thousands on both sides.

    Now a sample of the very bug that felled Pvt. Cable 99 years ago may provide a boost to efforts to find a vaccine to prevent the disease, which is highly contagious and kills hundreds of thousands of children a year, mainly in developing countries. It's also wholly resistant to antibiotics.