Historical and genomic data reveal the influencing factors on global transmission velocity of plague during the Third Pandemic.

Quantitative knowledge about which natural and anthropogenic factors influence the global spread of plague remains sparse. We estimated the worldwide spreading velocity of plague during the Third Pandemic, using more than 200 years of extensive human plague case records and genomic data, and analyzed the association of spatiotemporal environmental factors with spreading velocity. Here, we show that two lineages, 2.

Identification of Chinese plague foci from long-term epidemiological data.

Carrying out statistical analysis over an extensive dataset of human plague reports in Chinese villages from 1772 to 1964, we identified plague endemic territories in China (i.e., plague foci).

Plague and climate: scales matter.

Plague is enzootic in wildlife populations of small mammals in central and eastern Asia, Africa, South and North America, and has been recognized recently as a reemerging threat to humans. Its causative agent Yersinia pestis relies on wild rodent hosts and flea vectors for its maintenance in nature. Climate influences all three components (i.

Human seroreactivity against Bartonella species in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Objective: To assess the presence and identity of Bartonella species in a pool of human blood samples from DRC Congo.

Methods: Blood (±120μL) was collected anonymously from Congolese patients and placed on calibrated filter papers. Bartonella serology determination was performed using an indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) against six specific Bartonella antigens and Coxiella burnetii (C.

Influence of satellite-derived rainfall patterns on plague occurrence in northeast Tanzania.

Background: In the tropics, rainfall data are seldom accurately recorded, and are often discontinuous in time. In the scope of plague-research in northeast Tanzania, we adapted previous research to reconstruct rainfall patterns at a suitable resolution (1 km), based on time series of NDVI: more accurate satellite imagery was used, in the form of MODIS NDVI, and rainfall data were collected from the TRMM sensors instead of in situ data. First, we established a significant relationship between monthly rainfall and monthly composited MODIS NDVI.

Predicting potential risk areas of human plague for the Western Usambara Mountains, Lushoto District, Tanzania.

A natural focus of plague exists in the Western Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. Despite intense research, questions remain as to why and how plague emerges repeatedly in the same suite of villages. We used human plague incidence data for 1986-2003 in an ecological-niche modeling framework to explore the geographic distribution and ecology of human plague.

Human plague occurrences in Africa: an overview from 1877 to 2008.

Plague remains a public health concern worldwide, but particularly in Africa. Despite the long-standing history of human plague, it is difficult to get a historical and recent overview of the general situation. We searched and screened available information sources on human plague occurrences in African countries and compiled information on when, where and how many cases occurred in a centralised database.

Geographic distribution and ecological niche of plague in sub-Saharan Africa.

Background: Plague is a rapidly progressing, serious illness in humans that is likely to be fatal if not treated. It remains a public health threat, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of plague's highly focal nature, a thorough ecological understanding of the general distribution pattern of plague across sub-Saharan Africa has not been established to date.

Plague and the human flea, Tanzania.

Domestic fleas were collected in 12 villages in the western Usambara Mountains in Tanzania. Of these, 7 are considered villages with high plague frequency, where human plague was recorded during at least 6 of the 17 plague seasons between 1986 and 2004. In the remaining 5 villages with low plague frequency, plague was either rare or unrecorded.