Before the 20th century, the bubonic plague was the main disease in and around Europe. In the last 1,500 years there have been three major pandemics of this disease. The first occurred between the 5th and 7th centuries and killed about 15 million people in the Mediterranean. basin and strongly affected the Byzantine, Sassanian and Roman empires.
A second, much larger epidemic, the Black Death, occurred in Europe in the 14th century, where more than 50 million people, or about 50% of the total European population, died from this disease.
The third wave of this pandemic occurred globally in the 19th and 20th centuries, killing another 30 million people worldwide, many of them in China and India.
However, starting in the 1960s, cases decreased dramatically and bubonic plague is no longer considered a popular disease. Despite this, a new case was recently reported in the United States, which revived interest in this disease.
Although not unusual in many parts of the world, bubonic plague still exists in geographical spaces and can spread across communities if conditions are right.
Bubonic plague, or plague for short, is caused by a bacteria called Yersinia pestis. There are 3 types of plague caused through this pathogen, with another component of the framework being the main site of infection: pneumonic plague is mainly of pulmonary origin, septicemic plague is mainly of blood origin and bubonic plague is mainly of lymph node origin.
Although one shape can transshape into some other an infection, the shape a user has sometimes relies on how they were infected.
Bubonic plague is a form of Y pestis infection that is transmitted through fleas that live on small animals, basically rodents such as space rats and box rats. These rodents serve as reservoirs for the bacteria: they have few or no symptoms, but they can transmit the bacteria. others, adding humans.
This transmission from rodents to humans occurs through fleas. These insects bite rats and can then jump and bite a human, injecting the plague bacteria into the human’s lymphatic system. Then, the bacteria through this formula reach the lymph nodes and the infection begins.
The main symptom of bubonic plague is swollen lymph nodes in the neck, groin, thighs, and armpits. These swollen knots, called buboes, can cause the tissue around them to darken and die. They can also burst, releasing pus inside.
Other symptoms come with fever, headache and vomiting, and the pathogen can spread to other parts of the body, such as the lungs and blood, causing other plague bureaucracies. Bubonic plague kills 30 to 60% of people, while pneumonic and septicemia diseases remain fatal if untreated.
So why was it so important many years ago and hardly heard of today?It is about having that mixture of vector (flea), reservoir (rodent) and bacteria (Y pestis), all mixed and in close contact with humans.
Before the nineteenth century, he mainly thought that diseases were spread through miasmas: the destructive bureaucracy of the air. It wasn’t until after the 1880s that he learned that microscopic organisms transmitted between humans, animals, and the environment can cause disease.
Thanks to this, sanitation has advanced in many parts of the world, separating rodents from humans and breaking the cycle of plague transmission. The invention of antibiotics, especially fluoroquinolones, beginning in the 1960s, further reduced plague cases, as proper treatment can now be given for all forms.
Today, we still see cases of plague in hotspots, mainly in Asia, Africa and South America. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Peru and Madagascar are the countries with the maximum cases.
Madagascar has dozens of cases per year, with major outbreaks in 2014 and 2017 (the latter recorded more than 2,000 cases). Dense forest spaces are home to many rodents, and contact between humans and these ecosystems is the cause of these frequent epidemics.
The plague will probably never be eradicated. Because of its complex transmission network between fleas, rodents, and humans, it’s almost very unlikely to find and treat all of those aspects. However, through proper management of animals, separation of grass reservoirs and humans, and immediate and effective treatment, the number of plague cases is being reduced every year, in the hope that the number of cases will be negligible in sight.
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