tuberculosis bacteria :: Article Creator Why Some Tuberculosis Bacteria Prove DeadlyScienceDaily People who fall sick with drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) face daunting odds. Only about two in three survive the illness, unlike people with drug-sensitive TB, of whom more than 90 percent survive. Part of the reason drug-resistant TB is so lethal is because some antibiotics of first choice don't kill the TB bacteria, forcing doctors to treat the infection with second-line medications that are often more toxic and less effective. But the TB bacteria also may be undermining the body's ability to defend itself. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that the same mutation that makes TB bacteria withstand a first-line drug also elicits a different -- and probably weaker -- immune response in mice. "As the bacteria become drug resistant, they change physiologically and trick the immune system to beh...
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“Plague transmission rates increased from the Black Death to the Great Plague - UPI News” plus 1 more
Oct. 19 (UPI) -- From the 14th to the 19th centuries, Europe and Asia were struck by successive waves of the plague. New research -- published Monday in the journal PNAS -- suggests that over the course of the pandemic, from the Black Death of 1348 to the Great Plague of 1665, transmission rates increased four-fold.
In recent years, genomic analysis has offered scientists a variety of insights into the nature of bubonic plagues that decimated much of Europe and Asia during the Late Middle Ages, but details related to disease transmission mode and dynamics have been hard to come by.
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Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which can be transmitted via flea bites, the typical route for bubonic plague, or directly from human to human, called pneumonic plague.
"Both types of transmission can occur during a given epidemic, but which type of transmission seems most likely in various times and places, and why, is often debated," lead study author David Earn, a researcher in mathematical epidemiology at McMaster University in Canada, told UPI in an email.
By studying a variety of historical, demographic and epidemiological data, Earn and his colleagues were able to show that transmission steadily increased over the course of the epidemics that struck London between the 14th and 19th centuries.
The data also showed that pneumonic transmission could not have been the primary mode of transmission during the 14th century in London.
Scientists relied on three main sources of data: weekly all-cause mortality totals from parish registers, beginning in 1538, when deaths were first registered; weekly mortality from plague, recorded in the London Bills of Mortality; and last wills and testaments, dated to the day, running from 1340 to 1680.
Researchers used the mortality data to estimate transmission rates of each successive epidemic. The research team also ran models to estimate mortality totals had the early waves been driven primarily by human-to-human transmission.
"In this scenario of purely pneumonic transmission, we found that at most 15 recent of the population would have died from plague," Earn said. "But estimates of the mortality toll during the Black Death in 1348 are at least 30 percent of the population. This inconsistency makes purely pneumonic transmission in the 14th century implausible."
Earn and his colleagues suspect both climate and shifting population densities played a role in accelerating transmission rates during the later waves of the plague.
"Evidence has accumulated over the last 15 years or so that humidity affects influenza transmission, and it is reasonable to imagine that climate might affect plague transmission," Earn said.
In followup studies, researchers plan to investigate the effects of climate, population density, social structure and genetic changes on the transmissibility of plague and the primary transmission mode during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Nearly 700 years after the Black Death swept through Europe, it still haunts the world as the worst-case scenario for an epidemic. Called the Great Mortality as it caused its devastation, this second great pandemic of Bubonic Plague became known as the Black Death in the late 17th Century.
Modern genetic analysis suggests that the Bubonic plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis or Y. pestis. Chief among its symptoms are painfully swollen lymph glands that form pus-filled boils called buboes. Sufferers also face fever, chills, headaches, shortness of breath, hemorrhaging, bloody sputum, vomiting and delirium, and if it goes untreated, a survival rate of 50 percent.
During the Black Death, three different forms of the plague manifested across Europe. Below is a timeline of its gruesome assault on humanity.
Black Death Emerges, Spreads via the Black Sea
Fresco by an anonymous painter depicting 'The Triumph of Death.' Death as a skeleton rides a skeletal horse and picks off his victims.
Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
1346
The strain of Y. pestis emerges in Mongolia, according to John Kelly's account in The Great Mortality. It is possibly passed to humans by a tarabagan, a type of marmot. The deadliest outbreak is in the Mongol capital of Sarai, which the Mongols carry west to the Black Sea area.
Mongol King Janiberg and his army are in the nearby city of Tana when a brawl erupts between Italian merchants and a group of Muslims. Following the death of one of the Muslims, the Italians flee by sea to the Genoese outpost of Caffa and Janiberg follow on land. Upon arrival at Caffa, Janiberg's army lays siege for a year but they are stricken with an outbreak. As the army catapults the infected bodies of their dead over city walls, the under-siege Genoese become infected also.
May, 1347
Both sides in the siege are decimated and survivors in Caffa escape by sea, leaving behind streets covered with corpses being fed on by feral animals. One ship arrives in Constantinople, which, once infected, loses as much as 90 percent of its population.
October, 1347
Another Caffan ship docks in Sicily, the crew barely alive. Here the plague kills half the population and moves to Messina. Fleeing residents then spread it to mainland Italy, where one-third of the population is dead by the following summer.
November, 1347
The plague arrives in France, brought by another of the Caffa ships docking in Marseille. It spreads quickly through the country.
A New Strain Enters Europe
The plague in Tournai, 1349.
Photo12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
January, 1348
A different plague strain enters Europe through Genoa, brought by another Caffan ship that docks there. The Genoans attack the ship and drive it away, but they are still infected. Italy faces this second strain while already battling the previous one.
Y. pestis also heads east from Sicily into the Persian Empire and through Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, and south to Egypt, as well as Cyprus, which is also hit with destruction from an earthquake and deadly tidal wave at the same time.
Venice faces its own outbreak by pioneering the first organized response, with committees ordering ship inspections and burning those with contagions, shutting down taverns, and restricting wine from unknown sources. The canals fill with gondolas shouting official instructions for disposing of dead bodies. Despite those efforts, the plague kills 60 percent of the Venetian population.
April, 1348
The plague awakes an anti-Semitic rage around Europe, causing repeated massacres of Jewish communities, with the first one taking place in Provence, where 40 Jews were murdered.
June, 1348
The plague enters England through the port of Melcombe Regis, in Dorset. As it spreads through the town, some escape by fleeing inland, inadvertently spreading it further.
A group of religious zealots known as the Flagellants first begin to appear in Germany. These groups of anywhere from 50 to 500 hooded and half-naked men march, sing and thrash themselves with lashes until swollen and bloody. Originally the practice of 11th-century Italian monks during an epidemic, they spread out through Europe. Also known for their violent anti-Semitism, the Flagellants mysteriously disappear by 1350.
The plague hits Marseille, Paris and Normandy, and then the strain splits, with one strain moving onto the now-Belgian city of Tournai to the east and the other passing through Calais. and Avignon, where 50 percent of the population dies.
The plague also moves through Austria and Switzerland, where a fury of anti-Semitic massacres follow it along the Rhine after a rumor spreads that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning wells, as Jennifer Wright details in her book, Get Well Soon, History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. In towns throughout Germany and France, Jewish communities are completely annihilated. In response, King Casimir III of Poland offers a safe haven to the persecuted Jews, starting a mass migration to Poland and Lithuania. Marseilles is also considered a safe haven for Jews.
Black Death Reaches London, Scotland and Beyond
Flagellants, known as the Brothers of the Cross, scourging themselves as they walk through the streets in order to free the world from the Black Death, in the Belgium town of Tournai
Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images
October, 1348
Following the infection and death of King Edward III's daughter Princess Joan, the plague reaches London, according to King Death:The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England by Colin Platt. As the devastation grows, Londoners flee to the countryside to find food. Edward blames the plague on garbage and human excrement piled up in London streets and in the Thames River.
February, 1349
One of the worst massacres of Jews during the Black Death takes place on Valentine's Day in Strasbourg, with 2,000 Jewish people burned alive. In the spring, 3,000 Jews defend themselves in Mainz against Christians but are overcome and slaughtered.
An English ship brings the Black Death to Norway when it runs aground in Bergen. The ship's crew is dead by the end of the week and the pestilence travels to Denmark and Sweden, where the king believes fasting on a Friday and foregoing shoes on Sunday will please God and end the plague. It doesn't work, killing two of the king's brothers and moving into Russia and also eastern Greenland, forcing the Vikings to halt their exploration of North America.
March, 1350
Scotland, having so far avoided the plague, hopes to take advantage of English weakness by amassing an army and planning an invasion. While waiting on the border to begin the attack, troops became infected, with 5,000 dying. Choosing to retreat, the soldiers bring the disease back to their families and a third of Scotland perishes.
Black Death Fades, Leaving Half of Europe Dead
1351
The plague's spread significantly begins to peter out, possibly thanks to quarantine efforts, after causing the deaths of anywhere between 25 to 50 million people, and leading to the massacres of 210 Jewish communities. All total, Europe has lost about 50 percent of its population.
With the Black Death considered safely behind them, the people of Europe face a changed society. The combination of the massive death rate and the numbers of survivors fleeing their homes sends entrenched social and economic systems spiraling. It becomes easier to get work for better wages and the average standard of living rises.
With the feudal system dying, the aristocracy tries to pass laws preventing any further rise by the peasants, leading to upheaval and revolution in England and France. Significant losses within older intellectual communities brought on an unprecedented opportunity for new ideas and art concepts to take hold, directly leading to the Renaissance and a more youthful, enlightened period of human history.
The Bubonic Plague never completely exits, resurfacing several times through the centuries.
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