[The eagle and the louse: typhus in the Grand Army].

How is it that lice, such a common parasite, have shaken the Napoleonic empire? This paper, based on medical literature and on proven facts, is going to tell the history of such a "war pestilence", a "contagious typhus".

MxA protein in capillary blood of children with viral infections.

Capillary blood of febrile children was lysed by using a lysis buffer containing ascorbic acid. MxA quantitation was performed by an immunochemiluminescent assay. The MxA values were significantly higher in capillary blood of infants with viral infections due to adenovirus (n = 5), rotavirus (n = 15), or respiratory syncytial virus (n = 28), than in capillary whole blood from infants with bacterial infections (n = 6) and healthy control patients (n = 20).

A human IFNGR1 small deletion hotspot associated with dominant susceptibility to mycobacterial infection.

The immunogenetic basis of severe infections caused by bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine and environmental mycobacteria in humans remains largely unknown. We describe 18 patients from several generations of 12 unrelated families who were heterozygous for 1 to 5 overlapping IFNGR1 frameshift small deletions and a wild-type IFNGR1 allele. There were 12 independent mutation events at a single mutation site, defining a small deletion hotspot.

The MxA protein levels in whole blood lysates of patients with various viral infections.

Interferon alpha (IFNalpha), a type I interferon, can be considered as a viral infection marker because this cytokine is induced during many viral infections. However, it is quite difficult to detect IFNalpha in sera. Investigations are interested in various intra-cellular IFNalpha-induced proteins as viral infection markers.