Plasmid-mediated high-level resistance to multiple antibiotics was reported in a clinical isolate of Yersinia pestis in Madagascar in 1997. We describe a second Y. pestis strain with high-level resistance to streptomycin, isolated from a human case of bubonic plague in Madagascar. The resistance determinants were carried by a self-transferable plasmid that could conjugate at high frequencies to...

Yersinia pestis (Y. Pestis) is an infamous pathogen causing plague pandemics throughout history and is a selected agent of bioterrorism threatening public health. Y. pestis was first isolated by Alexandre Yersin in 1894 in Hong Kong and in the following years from all continents. Plague is enzootic in different rodents and their fleas in Africa, North and South America, and Asia, including the ...

Received Accepted Emergence, spread, persistence and fade-out of sylvatic plague in Kazakhstan Lise Heier1, Geir O. Storvik1,2, Stephen A. Davis3, Hildegunn Viljugrein1,4, Vladimir S. Ageyev5, Evgeniya Klassovskaya6 and Nils Chr. Stenseth1,* Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biology, University of Oslo, PO Box 1066 Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway Department of M...

Understanding the effects of land-use change on zoonotic disease risk is a pressing global health concern. Here, we compare prevalence of Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of plague, in rodents across two land-use types-agricultural and conserved-in northern Tanzania. Estimated abundance of seropositive rodents nearly doubled in agricultural sites compared with conserved sites. This relation...

Plague is a disease that has been present for thousands of years and described since the earliest medical accounts. It occurs today worldwide, and may present in a variety of clinical forms. Bubonic disease, pneumonic plague, and septicemic plague are seen in addition to a number of other less common manifestations. As an agent of bioterrorism,Yersinia pestis could pose an extreme threat if rel...

An outbreak of plague occurred in the town of Saklaspur, Hassan District (Mysore State), in March 1946. The first case was an imported one, not immediately recognized as plague. While suspicion was lurking in our minds that it might be plague, cases of ratfall occurred in the town and splenic smears of such rats were positive for B. testis. This finding and occurrence of other cases of human pl...

Of the 3 major factors (habitat loss, poisoning, and disease) that limit abundance of prairie dogs today, sylvatic plague caused by Yersinia pestis is the 1 factor that is beyond human control. Plague epizootics frequently kill .99% of prairie dogs in infected colonies. Although epizootics of sylvatic plague occur throughout most of the range of prairie dogs in the United States and are well de...

While the safety of the available live plague vaccine EV 76 (Paris) continues to be the subject of further study, the USP formol-killed, virulent Pasteurella pestis (Yersinia pestis) suspension capable of protecting 60% of non-human primates, particularly Hanuman langurs (Presbytis entellus), warrants further clinical tests and field trials. Inoculated in a dosage of 2x10(9) killed plague bacil...

Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of the disease plague, has been implicated in three historical pandemics. These include the third pandemic of the 19(th) and 20(th) centuries, during which plague was spread around the world, and the second pandemic of the 14(th)-17(th) centuries, which included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death. Previous studies have confirmed that Y. pestis ca...

Plague is a flea-borne zoonotic bacterial disease caused by Yersinia pestis. It has caused three historical pandemics, including the Black Death which killed nearly a third of Europe's population in the 14th century. In modern times, plague epizootics can extirpate entire susceptible wildlife populations and then disappear for long time periods. Understanding how Y. pestis is maintained during ...