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| | | #Redirect [[Yersinia pestis infection overview]] |
| The '''bubonic plague''' or ''bubonic fever'' is the best-known variant of the deadly [[infectious disease]] caused by the [[Enterobacteriaceae|enterobacteria]] ''[[Yersinia pestis]]''. The epidemiological use of the term ''[[plague]]'' is currently applied to bacterial infections that cause ''[[bubo]]es'', although historically the medical use of the term plague has been applied to [[pandemic]] infections in general.
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| ==Infection/Transmission==
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| [[Image:Bubonic plague flea.jpg|Male Xenopsylla cheopis (oriental rat flea) engorged with blood. This flea is the primary vector of plague in most large plague epidemics in Asia, Africa, and South America. Both male and female fleas can transmit the infection.]]
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| Bubonic plague is mainly a disease in rodents and [[flea]]s. Infection in a human occurs when a person is bitten by a flea that has been infected by biting a rodent that has been infected by the bite of an infected flea. The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it can not quell its hunger, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new victim, and the flea eventually dies from starvation. Any serious outbreak of plague is usually started by other disease outbreaks in rodents, or a rise in the rodent population.
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| In 1894, two bacteriologists, Alexandre Emile John Yersin of France and Shibasaburo Kitasato of Japan, independently isolated the bacterium in Hong Kong responsible for the [[Third Pandemic]]. Though both investigators reported their findings, a series of confusing and contradictory statements by Kitasato eventually led to the acceptance of Yersin as the primary discoverer of the organism. Yersin named it ''Pasteurella pestis'' in honor of the [[Pasteur Institute]], where he worked, but in 1967 it was moved to a new genus, renamed ''[[Yersinia pestis]]'' in honor of Yersin. Yersin also noted that rats were affected by plague not only during plague epidemics but also often preceding such epidemics in humans, and that plague was regarded by many locals as a disease of rats: villagers in China and India asserted that, when large numbers of rats were found dead, plague outbreaks in people soon followed.
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| In 1898, the French scientist Paul-Louis Simond (who had also come to China to battle the [[Third Pandemic]]) established the rat-flea [[Vector (biology)|vector]] that drives the disease. He had noted that persons who became ill did not have to be in close contact with each other to acquire the disease. In Yunnan, China, inhabitants would flee from their homes as soon as they saw dead rats, and on the island of Formosa (Taiwan), residents considered handling dead rats a risk for developing plague. These observations led him to suspect that the flea might be an intermediary factor in the transmission of plague, since people acquired plague only if they were in contact with recently dead rats, but not affected if they touched rats that had been dead for more than 24 hours. In a now classic experiment, Simond demonstrated how a healthy rat died of plague after infected fleas had jumped to it from a plague-dead rat.
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| In [[septicemia|septicemic]] plague, there is bleeding into the skin and other organs, which creates black patches on the skin. There are bite-like bumps on the skin, commonly red and sometimes white in the center. Untreated septicemic plague is universally fatal, but early treatment with [[antibiotics]] reduces the mortality rate to between 4 and 15 percent.<ref name="Wagle1948">{{cite journal
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| | author=Wagle PM
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| | title=Recent advances in the treatment of bubonic plague
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| | journal=Indian J Med Sci
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| | year=1948
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| | volume=2
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| | pages=489–94 }}</ref><!--
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| --><ref name="Meyer1950">{{cite journal
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| | author=Meyer KF
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| | title=Modern therapy of plague
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| | year=1950
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| | journal=J Am Med Assoc
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| | volume=144
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| | pages=982–5 }}</ref><!--
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| --><ref name="DattGupta1948">{{cite journal
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| | author=Datt Gupta AK
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| | title=A short note on plague cases treated at Campbell Hospital
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| | journal=Ind Med Gaz
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| | year=1948
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| | volume=83
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| | pages=150–1 }}</ref> People who die from this form of plague often die on the same day symptoms first appear.
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| The [[pneumonia|pneumonic]] plague infects the [[lung]]s, and with that infection comes the possibility of person-to-person transmission through respiratory droplets. The incubation period for pneumonic plague is usually between two and four days, but can be as little as a few hours. The initial symptoms, of headache, weakness, and coughing with [[hemoptysis]], are indistinguishable from other respiratory illnesses. Without diagnosis and treatment, the infection can be fatal in one to six days; mortality in untreated cases is 50-90%.<ref name="Hoffman1980">{{cite journal
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| | author=Hoffman SL
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| | title=Plague in the United States: the "Black Death" is still alive
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| | journal=Annals of Emergency Medicine
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| | year=1980
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| | volume=9
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| | pages=319–22 }}</ref>
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| ==References==
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| {{Reflist|2}}
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