Yersinia pestis | |
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A scanning electron micrograph depicting a mass of Yersinia pestis bacteria in the foregut of an infected flea | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Bacteria |
Phylum: | Pseudomonadota |
Class: | Gammaproteobacteria |
Order: | Enterobacterales |
Family: | Yersiniaceae |
Genus: | Yersinia |
Species: | Y. pestis
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Binomial name | |
Yersinia pestis (Lehmann & Neumann, 1896)
van Loghem, 1944 | |
Synonyms | |
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Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis; formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a gram-negative, non-motile, coccobacillus bacterium without spores that is related to both Yersinia enterocolitica and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, the pathogen from which Y. pestis evolved[1][2] and responsible for the Far East scarlet-like fever. It causes the disease plague, which caused the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history. Plague takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic. It is a facultative anaerobic organism that can infect humans primarily via the Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis), but also through airborne droplets for its pneumonic form.[3] Yersinia pestis is a parasite of its host, the rat flea, which is also a parasite of rats, hence Y. pestis is a hyperparasite.
Y. pestis was discovered in 1894 by Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss/French physician and bacteriologist from the Pasteur Institute, during an epidemic of the plague in Hong Kong.[4][5] Yersin was a member of the Pasteur school of thought. Kitasato Shibasaburō, a Japanese bacteriologist who practised Koch's methodology, was also engaged at the time in finding the causative agent of the plague.[6] However, Yersin actually linked plague with a bacillus, initially named Pasteurella pestis; it was renamed Yersinia pestis in 1944.
Between one thousand and two thousand cases of the plague are still reported to the World Health Organization every year.[7] With proper antibiotic treatment, the prognosis for victims is much better than before antibiotics were developed. Cases in Asia increased five- to six-fold during the time of the Vietnam War, possibly due to the disruption of ecosystems and closer proximity between people and animals. The plague is now commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar, areas that now account for over 95% of reported cases. The plague also has a detrimental effect on non-human mammals;[8] in the United States, these include the black-tailed prairie dog and the endangered black-footed ferret.