What exactly is Yersinia pestis?
Yersinia pestis (formerly called Pasteurella pestis) is a short gram-negative rod that causes plague. It is a disease of rodents (squirrels, rabbits, rats) that is transmitted to humans by flea bites or by person-to-person contact through aerosol inhalation.
What disease does Yersinia pestis cause?
Plague is a disease that affects humans and other mammals. It is caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis. Humans usually get plague after being bitten by a rodent flea that is carrying the plague bacterium or by handling an animal infected with plague.
What happens when you get Yersinia pestis?
People who have bubonic or septicemic plague can also develop Y. pestis infection in the lungs. Symptoms include high fever, chills, headaches, chest pain, rapid breathing, severe shortness of breath and cough that might bring up blood. Without proper treatment, the disease can quickly lead to death.
How can Yersinia pestis be transmitted?
Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, a zoonotic bacteria, usually found in small mammals and their fleas. It is transmitted between animals through fleas. Humans can be infected through: the bite of infected vector fleas.
Was the black plague an airborne disease?
Skeletons buried deep beneath a square in London yield information about how one of history’s deadliest plagues spread through 14th-century Britain.
What does Yersinia pestis do to the body?
Occasionally, Yersinia pestis causes infection of the lungs, resulting in the pneumonic plague. What distinguishes the plague from other invasive, systemic, and infectious diseases is that Yersinia pestis bacteria replicate extracellularly in tissues following lysis of macrophages and hence,…
How many people died from Yersinia pestis?
The organism Yersinia pestis is responsible for the plague, a disease that has an extremely important place in human history. During the 6th century AD, the plague ravaged the known world over a 50 year period causing 100 million deaths.
How does Yersinia pestis get its energy?
Y. pestis uses aerobic respiration and anaerobic fermentation to produce and consume hydrogen gas for energy. Yersinia pestis interacts mainly with rodents such as rats and fleas.
How does Yersinia pestis enter the body?
Fluid/Tissue. Y. pestis can be transmitted to humans through the handling of fluids or tissue from infected animals[2]. Once Y. pestis has entered the human host, the bacterium spreads throughout the lymphatic system and enters the bloodstream within 2-6 days [6].