Plague is an exotic vector-borne disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that causes mortality rates approaching 100% in black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus). We mapped the perimeter of the active portions of black-tailed prairie dog colonies annually between 1999 and 2005 at four prairie dog colony complexes in areas with a history of plague, as well as at two complexes tha...

BACKGROUND Plague is an epidemic-prone disease with a potential impact on public health, international trade, and tourism. It may emerge and re-emerge after decades of epidemiological silence. Today, in Latin America, human cases and foci are present in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. AIMS The objective of this study is to identify where cases of human plague still persist in Latin Americ...

UNLABELLED A cluster of human plague cases occurred in the seaport city of Mahajanga, Madagascar, from 1991 to 1999 following 62 years with no evidence of plague, which offered insights into plague pathogen dynamics in an urban environment. We analyzed a set of 44 Mahajanga isolates from this 9-year outbreak, as well as an additional 218 Malagasy isolates from the highland foci. We sequenced th...

Plague is an exceptionally virulent fl ea-borne illness caused by the gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis (Prentice and Rahalison 2007 ). Humans are accidental hosts of this bacterium, which normally circulates among certain rodent species and their fl eas, occasionally causing widespread plague epizootics with high mortality among its hosts. Most people have little knowledge of plague’s st...

Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which, during the fourteenth century, caused the deaths of an estimated 75-200 million people in Europe. Plague epidemics still occur in Africa, Asia and South America. Madagascar is today one of the most endemic countries, reporting nearly one third of the human cases worldwide from 2004 to 2009. The persistence of plague...

Human plague remains a public health concern in Tanzania despite its quiescence in most foci for years, considering the recurrence nature of the disease. Despite the long-standing history of this problem, there have not been recent reviews of the current knowledge on plague in Tanzania. This work aimed at providing a current overview of plague in Tanzania in terms of its introduction, potential...

The Gram negative bacterium Yersinia pestis can infect humans by multiple routes to cause plague. Three plague pandemics have occurred and Y. pestis has been linked to biowarfare in the past. The continued risk of plague as a bioweapon has prompted increased research to understand Y. pestis pathogenesis and develop new plague therapeutics. Several in vivo models have been developed for this res...

In 1996, five cases of human plague, of which two were fatal, were reported in the United States; both decedents had septicemic plague that was not diagnosed until after they died. This report summarizes the investigation of the two fatal cases and underscores the need for health-care providers in areas with endemic plague to maintain a high level of awareness about the risk for plague in their...

To the Editor: Plague has been one of the most devastating infectious diseases in human history. The etiologic agent, Yersinia pestis, primarily affects rodents and is usually transmitted to humans through infec-tive flea bites. Endemic plague foci result from circulation of the plague bacillus in its rodent reservoir, the source of human plague cases (1). Carnivores such as dogs and foxes, whi...

Yersinia pestis invaded the continental United States in 1900 and subsequently became established in wild rodent populations in several western states, traversing 2,250 km in approximately 40 years. However, the specific path of the eastward expansion of plague into the United States is poorly understood. We directly calculated velocities of disease spread and performed trend-surface analyses o...