Isolated case or risk of psychosis: A rare human case of bubonic plague was identified a few days ago in Deschutes County, Oregon, in the northwestern United States.
The patient, currently under treatment, was probably infected by his cat. “All close contacts of the resident and their pets have been contacted and given medication to prevent illness,” Dr. said Richard Fawcett, Deschutes County Health Officer. But how could this patient have been infected by his cat? By what mechanisms is human contamination possible by bubonic plague? Should you be worried if you have a cat?
A disease is still in circulation
If the mere mention of bubonic plague raises a shudder, that’s because of the Black Death, an epidemic that wiped out at least a third of the European population in the Middle Ages. Many believe it is extinct, but it is still a disease that is prevalent today. “It is still prevalent in Africa, Asia and the Americas and is currently one of the re-emerging diseases in the world,” the Pasteur Institute underlines.
If the disease is rare in developed countries, “the United States is not spared: local cases of human plague are reported every year on the West Coast,” recalls the Pasteur Institute. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the main federal health agency, there are an average of seven cases of plague in humans each year in the United States. In Oregon, the last reported case of bubonic plague was in 2015, according to the state health administration of more than 4.2 million residents.
“A lot of people don’t know that plague is endemic in parts of the United States,” he said New York Times Dr. Erin Phipps, a public health veterinarian in New Mexico. It is not a disease of the past.”
Human contamination by animals
How do these human contaminations occur? “Plague is a disease of rodents, primarily carried by rodents and transmitted to humans by the flea bites of infected rodents,” explains the Pasteur Institute. In practice, plague is caused by the bacteria “Yersinia pestis”, which spreads among different populations of wild rodents. Then, fleas that feed on infected rats can spread the plague to other animals, including cats. If these pets become infected by chasing infected rodents or by being bitten by contaminated fleas, they can transmit the disease to humans.
“Since 1977, 407 cats in New Mexico have been diagnosed with plague,” Dr. Phipps said. One of the most at-risk groups is pets that hunt. And cats are very susceptible to plague, and it can be fatal for them,” she added.
The American patient’s cat, which showed symptoms of plague, died as a result of its infection, local health officials said.
Effective support
In humans, plague symptoms appear up to eight days after infection, and may include fever, nausea, weakness, chills, and muscle aches. If not diagnosed in time, bubonic plague can progress to septicemic plague – a bloodstream infection – or pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs. Two more serious illnesses.
“Fortunately, this case was identified and treated at an early stage of the disease, posing little risk to the community,” authorities assured in a press release. Thus, when the disease is diagnosed at an early stage, treatment with antibiotics can cure it.
And what is the risk of contracting bubonic plague in France? Primarily, it is very limited. According to the Pasteur Institute, the last recorded human case dates back to 1945 in Corsica. But when traveling to the most affected areas of the world such as “Congo, Uganda, Peru and especially Madagascar, the country with the highest number of human cases of plague in the world (between 250 and 500 cases per year)”, the biomedical research center is prone to contamination. It recommends “avoiding contact with rodents and protecting yourself from flea bites with skin repellents” to reduce the risk.
