Plague is an ancient disease of humans and animals, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and transmitted by fleas. It continues to occur in many regions of the world: in the Far East, Central Asia, North Africa, subSaharan Africa, and North and South America. However, >90 % of cases of human plague are reported in Africa. Most cases result from flea bites and take the clinical form of buboni...

BACKGROUND Plague is often fatal without prompt and appropriate treatment. It affects mainly poor and remote populations. Late diagnosis is one of the major causes of human death and spread of the disease, since it limits the effectiveness of control measures. We aimed to develop and assess a rapid diagnostic test (RDT) for plague. METHODS We developed a test that used monoclonal antibodies t...

Introduction: Biological attacks are a phenomenon that started on a serious note in the twentieth century and such weapons are being developed every day.The agent of plague is one of those listed as biological weapons by the Weapons Convention. So, the danger of its biological or bioterrorist applications by the enemy is possible and poses a serious threat. The purpose of compiling this article...

Literature suggests that higher resolution remote sensing data integrated in Geographic Information System (GIS) can provide greater possibility to refine the analysis of land cover and terrain characteristics for explanation of abundance and distribution of plague hosts and vectors and hence of health risk hazards to humans. These technologies are not widely used in East Africa for studies on ...

Identifying key reservoirs for zoonoses is crucial for understanding variation in incidence. Plague re-emerged in Mahajanga, Madagascar in the 1990s but there has been no confirmed case since 1999. Here we combine ecological and genetic data, from during and after the epidemics, with experimental infections to examine the role of the shrew Suncus murinus in the plague epidemiological cycle. The...

Plague hospitals played a key role in the provision of poor relief late medieval and early modern France. As came to be identified as principal carriers plague, they were singled out for attention special measures imposed upon them – controls that justified by claim being taken wider interests public health. Yet plague not just institutions confinement poor. Municipal councils developed these p...

Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague, has been detected in fleas and mammals throughout the western United States. This highly virulent infection is rare in humans, surveillance of the disease is expensive, and it often was assumed that risk of exposure to Y. pestis is high in most of the western United States. For these reasons, some local health departments in these plague-affected ...

BACKGROUND Plague is still a public health problem in the world and is re-emerging, but no efficient vaccine is available. We previously reported that oral inoculation of a live attenuated Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, the recent ancestor of Yersinia pestis, provided protection against bubonic plague. However, the strain poorly protected against pneumonic plague, the most deadly and contagious f...

Predators play important roles in the ecology, epidemiology, and surveillance of plague in the United States. Most predators are accidental hosts of plague and, with the possible exception of grasshopper mice (Onychomys spp.), are not important sources of infection for feeding fleas. However, predators undoubtedly do play an important role in the natural cycle of plague by transporting infected...