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Clinical Infectious Diseases : An... May 2020Yersinia pestis continues to cause sporadic cases and outbreaks of plague worldwide and is considered a tier 1 bioterrorism select agent due to its potential for...
BACKGROUND
Yersinia pestis continues to cause sporadic cases and outbreaks of plague worldwide and is considered a tier 1 bioterrorism select agent due to its potential for intentional use. Knowledge about the clinical manifestations of plague during pregnancy, specifically the maternal, fetal, and neonatal risks, is very limited.
METHODS
We searched 12 literature databases, performed hand searches, and consulted plague experts to identify publications on plague during pregnancy. Articles were included if they reported a case of plague during pregnancy and at least 1 maternal or fetal outcome.
RESULTS
Our search identified 6425 articles, of which 59 were eligible for inclusion and described 160 cases of plague among pregnant women. Most published cases occurred during the preantibiotic era. Among those treated with antimicrobials, the most commonly used were sulfonamides (75%) and streptomycin (54%). Among cases treated with antimicrobials, maternal mortality and fetal fatality were 29% and 62%, respectively; for untreated cases, maternal mortality and fetal fatality were 67% and 74%, respectively. Five cases demonstrated evidence of Y. pestis in fetal or neonatal tissues.
CONCLUSIONS
Untreated Y. pestis infection during pregnancy is associated with a high risk of maternal mortality and pregnancy loss. Appropriate antimicrobial treatment can improve maternal survival, although even with antimicrobial treatment, there remains a high risk of pregnancy loss. Limited evidence suggests that maternal-fetal transmission of Y. pestis is possible, particularly in the absence of antimicrobial treatment. These results emphasize the need to treat or prophylax pregnant women with suspected plague with highly effective antimicrobials as quickly as possible.
Topics: Anti-Bacterial Agents; Bioterrorism; Disease Outbreaks; Female; Humans; Plague; Pregnancy; Yersinia pestis
PubMed: 32435806
DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciz1228 -
Database : the Journal of Biological... Nov 2022Plague has been confirmed as an extremely horrific international quarantine infectious disease attributed to Yersinia pestis. It has an extraordinarily high lethal rate...
Plague has been confirmed as an extremely horrific international quarantine infectious disease attributed to Yersinia pestis. It has an extraordinarily high lethal rate that poses a serious hazard to human and animal lives. With the deepening of research, there has been a considerable amount of literature related to the plague that has never been systematically integrated. Indeed, it makes researchers time-consuming and laborious when they conduct some investigation. Accordingly, integrating and excavating plague-related knowledge from considerable literature takes on a critical significance. Moreover, a comprehensive plague knowledge base should be urgently built. To solve the above issues, the plague knowledge base is built for the first time. A database is built from the literature mining based on knowledge graph, which is capable of storing, retrieving, managing and accessing data. First, 5388 plague-related abstracts that were obtained automatically from PubMed are integrated, and plague entity dictionary and ontology knowledge base are constructed by using text mining technology. Second, the scattered plague-related knowledge is correlated through knowledge graph technology. A multifactor correlation knowledge graph centered on plague is formed, which contains 9633 nodes of 33 types (e.g. disease, gene, protein, species, symptom, treatment and geographic location), as well as 9466 association relations (e.g. disease-gene, gene-protein and disease-species). The Neo4j graph database is adopted to store and manage the relational data in the form of triple. Lastly, a plague knowledge base is built, which can successfully manage and visualize a large amount of structured plague-related data. This knowledge base almost provides an integrated and comprehensive plague-related knowledge. It should not only help researchers to better understand the complex pathogenesis and potential therapeutic approaches of plague but also take on a key significance to reference for exploring potential action mechanisms of corresponding drug candidates and the development of vaccine in the future. Furthermore, it is of great significance to promote the field of plague research. Researchers are enabled to acquire data more easily for more effective research. Database URL: http://39.104.28.169:18095/.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Plague; Pattern Recognition, Automated; Databases, Factual; Knowledge; Knowledge Bases
PubMed: 36412326
DOI: 10.1093/database/baac100 -
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases Aug 2020Yersinia pestis, the bacterial causative agent of plague, remains an important threat to human health. Plague is a rodent-borne disease that has historically shown an... (Review)
Review
Yersinia pestis, the bacterial causative agent of plague, remains an important threat to human health. Plague is a rodent-borne disease that has historically shown an outstanding ability to colonize and persist across different species, habitats, and environments while provoking sporadic cases, outbreaks, and deadly global epidemics among humans. Between September and November 2017, an outbreak of urban pneumonic plague was declared in Madagascar, which refocused the attention of the scientific community on this ancient human scourge. Given recent trends and plague's resilience to control in the wild, its high fatality rate in humans without early treatment, and its capacity to disrupt social and healthcare systems, human plague should be considered as a neglected threat. A workshop was held in Paris in July 2018 to review current knowledge about plague and to identify the scientific research priorities to eradicate plague as a human threat. It was concluded that an urgent commitment is needed to develop and fund a strong research agenda aiming to fill the current knowledge gaps structured around 4 main axes: (i) an improved understanding of the ecological interactions among the reservoir, vector, pathogen, and environment; (ii) human and societal responses; (iii) improved diagnostic tools and case management; and (iv) vaccine development. These axes should be cross-cutting, translational, and focused on delivering context-specific strategies. Results of this research should feed a global control and prevention strategy within a "One Health" approach.
Topics: Animals; Disease Outbreaks; Disease Reservoirs; Humans; Insect Vectors; Madagascar; Neglected Diseases; Plague; Rodentia; Siphonaptera; Yersinia pestis
PubMed: 32853251
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0008251 -
The Ulster Medical Journal Sep 2022Humankind has lived with the danger of endemic, epidemic and pandemic disease for thousands of years. The effects of these outbreaks have often devastated human...
Humankind has lived with the danger of endemic, epidemic and pandemic disease for thousands of years. The effects of these outbreaks have often devastated human populations. Sixteen pandemic events causing an estimated 147 million deaths have occurred since the eighth century, The Black Death and the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 probably having the greatest impact. Animal populations, both wild and domestic, have similarly suffered devastating outbreaks of disease which, on occasions, have translated into serious effects on human health. The deliberate or accidental introduction of animals into virgin areas has given rise to unforeseen disease events occasionally leading to extinction. Similarly, human intent or negligence and the vagaries of nature itself has resulted in ill health and loss of life. This paper describes the history of pandemics, epidemics and disasters, and the attempts to bring them under control.
Topics: Humans; Plague
PubMed: 36474849
DOI: No ID Found -
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases Jun 2024Plague, a zoonotic disease caused by Yersinia pestis, was responsible for 3 historical human pandemics that killed millions of people. It remains endemic in rodent... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Plague, a zoonotic disease caused by Yersinia pestis, was responsible for 3 historical human pandemics that killed millions of people. It remains endemic in rodent populations in Africa, Asia, North America, and South America but human plague is rare in most of these locations. However, human plague is still highly prevalent in Madagascar, which typically records a significant part of all annual global cases. This has afforded an opportunity to study contemporary human plague in detail using various typing methods for Y. pestis.
AIM
This review aims to summarize the methods that have been used to type Y. pestis in Madagascar along with the major discoveries that have been made using these approaches.
METHODS
Pubmed and Google Scholar were used to search for the keywords: "typing Yersinia pestis Madagascar," "evolution Yersinia pestis Madagascar," and "diversity Yersinia pestis Madagascar." Eleven publications were relevant to our topic and further information was retrieved from references cited in those publications.
RESULTS
The history of Y. pestis typing in Madagascar can be divided in 2 periods: the pre-genomics and genomics eras. During the pre-genomics era, ribotyping, direct observation of plasmid content and plasmid restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLP) were employed but only revealed a limited amount of diversity among Malagasy Y. pestis strains. Extensive diversity only started to be revealed in the genomics era with the use of clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR), multiple-locus variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) analysis (MLVA), and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) discovered from whole genome sequences. These higher-resolution genotyping methods have made it possible to highlight the distribution and persistence of genotypes in the different plague foci of Madagascar (Mahajanga and the Central and Northern Highlands) by genotyping strains from the same locations across years, to detect transfers between foci, to date the emergence of genotypes, and even to document the transmission of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) strains during a pneumonic plague outbreak. Despite these discoveries, there still remain topics that deserve to be explored, such as the contribution of horizontal gene transfer to the evolution of Malagasy Y. pestis strains and the evolutionary history of Y. pestis in Madagascar.
CONCLUSIONS
Genotyping of Y. pestis has yielded important insights on plague in Madagascar, particularly since the advent of whole-genome sequencing (WGS). These include a better understanding of plague persistence in the environment, antimicrobial AMR and multi-drug resistance in Y. pestis, and the person-to-person spread of pneumonic plague. Considering that human plague is still a significant public health threat in Madagascar, these insights can be useful for controlling and preventing human plague in Madagascar and elsewhere, and also are relevant for understanding the historical pandemics and the possible use of Y. pestis as a biological weapon.
Topics: Yersinia pestis; Madagascar; Plague; Humans; Animals; Genotype; Genotyping Techniques
PubMed: 38935608
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0012252 -
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2020My essay focuses on Charles Rosenberg's provocative and enduring ideal type of epidemic drama in three acts, which he assembled from a vast knowledge of disease history...
My essay focuses on Charles Rosenberg's provocative and enduring ideal type of epidemic drama in three acts, which he assembled from a vast knowledge of disease history that stretched from the end of the seventeenth century to his then-present pandemic, HIV/AIDS of the 1980s. Reaching back to the Plague of Athens, my essay elaborates on Rosenberg's dramaturgy by questioning whether blame, division, and collective violence were so universal or even the dominant "acts" of epidemics not only before the nineteenth century but to the present. Instead, with certain pandemics such as yellow fever in the Deep South or the Great Influenza of 1918-20, unity, mass volunteerism, and self-abnegation played leading roles. Finally, not all epidemics ended "with a whimper" as attested by the long early modern history of plague. These often concluded literally with a bang: lavish planning of festivals of thanksgiving, choreographed with processions, innumerable banners, commissions of paintings, ex-voto churches, trumpets, tambourines, artillery fire, and fireworks.
Topics: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome; Epidemics; History, 15th Century; History, 16th Century; History, 17th Century; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; History, Ancient; History, Medieval; Humans; Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919; Plague; Yellow Fever
PubMed: 33775940
DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2020.0083 -
Integrative Zoology Nov 2021Plague has been known since ancient times as a re-emerging infectious disease, causing considerable socioeconomic burden in regional hotspots. To better understand the...
Plague has been known since ancient times as a re-emerging infectious disease, causing considerable socioeconomic burden in regional hotspots. To better understand the epidemiological cycle of the causative agent of the plague, its potential occurrence, and possible future dispersion, one must carefully consider the taxonomy, distribution, and ecological requirements of reservoir-species in relation either to natural or human-driven changes (e.g. climate change or urbanization). In recent years, the depth of knowledge on species taxonomy and species composition in different landscapes has undergone a dramatic expansion, driven by modern taxonomic methods such as synthetic surveys that take into consideration morphology, genetics, and the ecological setting of captured animals to establish their species identities. Here, we consider the recent taxonomic changes of the rodent species in known plague reservoirs and detail their distribution across the world, with a particular focus on those rodents considered to be keystone host species. A complete checklist of all known plague-infectable vertebrates living in plague foci is provided as a Supporting Information table.
Topics: Animal Distribution; Animals; Disease Reservoirs; Global Health; Plague; Rodentia; Yersinia pestis
PubMed: 33264458
DOI: 10.1111/1749-4877.12511 -
Journal of Dental Education Jun 2021Major pandemics have tremendous effects on society. They precipitated the early decline of the Western Roman Empire and helped spread Christianity. There are countless...
Major pandemics have tremendous effects on society. They precipitated the early decline of the Western Roman Empire and helped spread Christianity. There are countless such examples of infectious diseases altering the course of history. The impact of epidemics on education however is less well documented. This present historical account of the past 800 years looks specifically at how some aspects of education were shaped from the early medieval epidemics such as leprosy and the Black Plague to the Spanish Flu and COVID-19. Leprosy changed religious education, and the Black Plague may have contributed to the rise of medical schools, hospitals, public health education, and led to the implementation of lazarettos and the quarantine. The smallpox epidemic helped usher in public health education for immunization, while the 1918 Spanish Flu precipitated the rise of education by correspondence, and recently COVID-19 has catapulted remote digital learning to the forefront of higher education.
Topics: COVID-19; History, 20th Century; Humans; Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919; Pandemics; Plague; SARS-CoV-2
PubMed: 33876429
DOI: 10.1002/jdd.12615 -
Vector Borne and Zoonotic Diseases... Dec 2020Plague originated in Asia as a flea-borne zoonosis of mammalian hosts. Today, the disease is distributed nearly worldwide. In western United States of America, plague is...
Plague originated in Asia as a flea-borne zoonosis of mammalian hosts. Today, the disease is distributed nearly worldwide. In western United States of America, plague is maintained, transmitted, and amplified in diverse communities of rodents and fleas. We examined flea diversity on three species of prairie dogs ( spp., PDs) and six species of sympatric small rodents in Montana and Utah, United States of America. Among 2896 fleas, 19 species were identified; 13 were found on PDs and 9 were found on small rodents. In Montana, three flea species were found on PDs; the three species parasitize PDs and mice. In Utah, 12 flea species were found on PDs; the 12 species parasitize PDs, mice, voles, chipmunks, ground squirrels, rock squirrels, and marmots. Diverse flea communities and their willingness to parasitize many types of hosts, across multiple seasons and habitats, may favor plague maintenance and transmission. Flea parasitism on deer mice varied directly with elevation. Fleas are prone to desiccation, and might prosper at higher, mesic elevations; in addition, nest characteristics may vary with elevation. Effective management of plague is critical. Plague management is probably most effective when encompassing communities of rodents and fleas. Treatment of PD burrows with 0.05% deltamethrin dust, which suppressed fleas on PDs for >365 days, suppressed fleas on small rodents for at least 58 days. At one site, deltamethrin suppressed fleas on small rodents for at least 383 days. By simultaneously suppressing fleas on PDs and small rodents, deltamethrin should promote ecosystem resilience and One Health objectives.
Topics: Animals; Ecosystem; Flea Infestations; Insecticides; Montana; Nitriles; Plague; Pyrethrins; Rodentia; Sciuridae; Siphonaptera; Utah
PubMed: 33074791
DOI: 10.1089/vbz.2020.2625 -
American Journal of Surgery Aug 2020• Surgeons have a long tradition of leading research into pandemics. • Examples include Guy de Chauliac, James Lind, John Snow, John Hunter, Walter Reed. • We...
• Surgeons have a long tradition of leading research into pandemics. • Examples include Guy de Chauliac, James Lind, John Snow, John Hunter, Walter Reed. • We should leverage this history to lead efforts fighting COVID-19.
Topics: Betacoronavirus; COVID-19; Cholera; Coronavirus Infections; Europe; Global Health; History, 15th Century; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; History, Medieval; Humans; Leadership; North America; Pandemics; Physician's Role; Plague; Pneumonia, Viral; SARS-CoV-2; Surgeons
PubMed: 32386712
DOI: 10.1016/j.amjsurg.2020.04.042