Science Daily February 24, 2023 The historical epidemiology of plague is controversial due to the scarcity and ambiguity of available data. By phylogenetic analysis an international team of researchers (Canada, Denmark, USA – Indiana University, Rutgers, University of South Carolina, Australia) has revealed that the Danish Y. pestis sequences were interspersed with those from other European countries, rather than forming a single cluster, indicative of the generation, spread, and replacement of bacterial variants through communities rather than their long-term local persistence. These results provide an epidemiological link between Y. pestis and the unknown pestilence that afflicted medieval and early modern […]
Tag Archives: Plague
NIH Awards $3M Grant to Albany Med for Plague Vaccine Development
Global Biodefense April 8, 2022 Under a five-year grant from NIAID researchers at Albany Medical College are working to develop a vaccine that could protect against plague. Bubonic plague is the most common naturally occurring form of the three main types of plague, which also include pneumonic plague and septicemic plague. In the U.S., plague is most common in rural areas of the southwest, particularly New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. It is treated with antibiotics. There is no vaccine currently available that provides long-term defense against it. While plague in humans is relatively rare, there strains that are resistant to […]