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Epidemiology, Disease Transmission, Prevention, and Control
Published in Julius P. Kreier, Infection, Resistance, and Immunity, 2022
The vector may harbor the microbe in its body but without multiplication. Yersinia pestis is carried by infected fleas, in which it passes through the gastrointestinal tract without change. The transmission is called biological when propagation, cyclic development, or a combination of these is required before the vector can transmit the organisms. Biological transmission implies that an incubation period in the vector is required following infection before the vector becomes infective. An example of this is what happens In the triatomine vectors of Chagas′ disease (Figure 21.7). Trypanosoma cruzi requires time to multiply in the gut before it is passed in infectious form in the insects′ urine and feces. The infectious agent may be passed to succeeding generations as happens with transovarian transmission of some viruses, or it may go from one stage of the life cycle of the vector to another, for example, from egg to nymph to adult.
Disease
Published in Robert S. Holzman, Anesthesia and the Classics, 2022
Pestis is Latin for plague, or pestilence, an infectious disease caused by Yersinia pestis, a gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium. Pestis, as a personification of pestilence, plague, illness, sickness and disease, was also a Roman component of Nosos/Nosoi, and was portrayed either as a single individual daemon (ancient form of demon, or spirit), or as a number of daimones.9
How Pandemics End
Published in William C. Cockerham, Geoffrey B. Cockerham, The COVID-19 Reader, 2020
The disease is caused by a strain of bacteria, Yersinia pestis, that lives on fleas that live on rats. But bubonic plague, which became known as the Black Death, also can be passed from infected person to infected person through respiratory droplets, so it cannot be eradicated simply by killing rats.
Re-establishing the utility of tetracycline-class antibiotics for current challenges with antibiotic resistance
Published in Annals of Medicine, 2022
Kerry L. LaPlante, Abhay Dhand, Kelly Wright, Melanie Lauterio
Tetracycline-class drugs inhibit bacterial protein synthesis by binding to bacterial ribosomes and interacting with the highly conserved 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) in the 30S ribosomal subunit [6]. The drug class demonstrates a broad spectrum of activity against a wide range of gram-positive, gram-negative, and atypical pathogens, resulting in the extensive use of the tetracycline class in both humans and animals after the drugs were initially discovered [5]. Indications for treatment of bacterial infections include pneumonia; skin infections; bone and joint infections; sexually transmitted infections including chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhoea; intra-abdominal infections; biothreat pathogens, including Yersinia pestis, Bacillus anthracis, and Francisella tularensis; and other specific bacterial pathogens such as Rickettsia spp, Borrelia spp, and nontuberculous mycobacteria. Tetracycline-class agents are recommended as first-line treatment options for many of these indications [7–13].
Paleogenomics of the prehistory of Europe: human migrations, domestication and disease
Published in Annals of Human Biology, 2021
Javier G. Serrano, Alejandra C. Ordóñez, Rosa Fregel
During the Neolithic, many European settlements experienced an economic decline that may have favoured the later Steppe colonisation (Fowler and Hofmann 2015). The genomic sequences of Yersinia pestis strains from across the Neolithic/Bronze Age Eurasia (Rasmussen et al. 2015; Andrades Valtueña et al. 2017; Spyrou et al. 2018; Rascovan et al. 2019) have highlighted the potential burden of these deadly bacteria. Rascovan et al. (2019) have proposed that poor living conditions in Trypillian culture mega-settlements (located in the Balkans) (Immel et al. 2020) may have favoured the pathogen’s emergence and its introduction into the European population after the Neolithic period. Later in the Bronze Age, as a result of Trypillia’s trade networks, western populations introduced Y. pestis into Siberia and the Eurasian Steppe. During the Neolithic decline, Steppe migrants reintroduced the pathogen in Europe (Rascovan et al. 2019), where it diverged into multiple lineages (Spyrou et al. 2018).
Prior pandemics. looking to the past for insight into the COVID-19 pandemic
Published in Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives, 2021
In his famous painting, The Triumph of Death (Figure 2), Pieter Bruegel depicts the indiscriminate destruction of human life and the social disruption caused by pandemics like the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918/1919, and in Bruegel’s case, the Black Death. The latter plague, the Black Death, was a world-wide epidemic (or pandemic) that killed an estimated 1/3 of the population of Europe, Asia and Africa during the second half of the 14th Century C.E. and persisted in sporadic outbreaks for another 200 years. Its cause, the bacterium Yersinia pestis, continues to cycle quietly among several animal species, occasionally re-emerging to cause limited outbreaks to this day – most recently in Madagascar. The infection spreads to humans from rats and other small animals by fleas that have fed on infected animals. The 14th century pandemic likely originated in Mongolia and spread west along the Silk Road among crusaders returning from fighting in the Holy Land. As reflected in Bruegel’s painting, the large number of deaths caused by the infection generated a sense of inevitable doom that led to waves of warfare, crime, popular revolt, flagellation and persecution. Although the 14th century pandemic of bubonic plague is the best known example of the Black Death, the Justinian Plague of the 6th century C.E. had an equally devastating effect on Rome’s Byzantine Empire, killing an estimated 25–50 million people and contributing to the eastern empire’s eventual decline [2].