Cargando…
Deliberate release: Plague – A review
Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of plague and is considered one of the most likely pathogens to be used as a bioweapon. In humans, plague is a severe clinical infection that can rapidly progress with a high mortality despite antibiotic therapy. Therefore, early treatment of Y. pestis infectio...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.
2020
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7270574/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32835180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jobb.2020.02.001 |
_version_ | 1783541925343657984 |
---|---|
author | Ansari, Issmaeel Grier, Gareth Byers, Mark |
author_facet | Ansari, Issmaeel Grier, Gareth Byers, Mark |
author_sort | Ansari, Issmaeel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of plague and is considered one of the most likely pathogens to be used as a bioweapon. In humans, plague is a severe clinical infection that can rapidly progress with a high mortality despite antibiotic therapy. Therefore, early treatment of Y. pestis infection is crucial. This review provides an overview of its clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment, prophylaxis, and protection requirements for the use of clinicians. We discuss the likelihood of a deliberate release of plague and the feasibility of obtaining, isolating, culturing, transporting and dispersing plague in the context of an attack aimed at a westernized country. The current threat status and the medical and public health responses are reviewed. We also provide a brief review of the potential prehospital treatment strategy and vaccination against Y. pestis. Further, we discuss the plausibility of antibiotic resistant plague bacterium, F1-negative Y. pestis, and also the possibility of a plague mimic along with potential strategies of defense against these. An extensive literature search on the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases was conducted to collate papers relevant to plague and its deliberate release. Our review concluded that the deliberate release of plague is feasible but unlikely to occur, and that a robust public health response and early treatment would rapidly halt the transmission of plague in the population. Front-line clinicians should be aware of the potential of a deliberate release of plague and prepared to instigate early isolation of patients. Moreover, front-line clinicians should be weary of the possibility of suicide attackers and mindful of the early escalation to public health organizations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7270574 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-72705742020-06-05 Deliberate release: Plague – A review Ansari, Issmaeel Grier, Gareth Byers, Mark J Biosaf Biosecur Article Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of plague and is considered one of the most likely pathogens to be used as a bioweapon. In humans, plague is a severe clinical infection that can rapidly progress with a high mortality despite antibiotic therapy. Therefore, early treatment of Y. pestis infection is crucial. This review provides an overview of its clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment, prophylaxis, and protection requirements for the use of clinicians. We discuss the likelihood of a deliberate release of plague and the feasibility of obtaining, isolating, culturing, transporting and dispersing plague in the context of an attack aimed at a westernized country. The current threat status and the medical and public health responses are reviewed. We also provide a brief review of the potential prehospital treatment strategy and vaccination against Y. pestis. Further, we discuss the plausibility of antibiotic resistant plague bacterium, F1-negative Y. pestis, and also the possibility of a plague mimic along with potential strategies of defense against these. An extensive literature search on the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases was conducted to collate papers relevant to plague and its deliberate release. Our review concluded that the deliberate release of plague is feasible but unlikely to occur, and that a robust public health response and early treatment would rapidly halt the transmission of plague in the population. Front-line clinicians should be aware of the potential of a deliberate release of plague and prepared to instigate early isolation of patients. Moreover, front-line clinicians should be weary of the possibility of suicide attackers and mindful of the early escalation to public health organizations. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. 2020-03 2020-03-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7270574/ /pubmed/32835180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jobb.2020.02.001 Text en © 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Ansari, Issmaeel Grier, Gareth Byers, Mark Deliberate release: Plague – A review |
title | Deliberate release: Plague – A review |
title_full | Deliberate release: Plague – A review |
title_fullStr | Deliberate release: Plague – A review |
title_full_unstemmed | Deliberate release: Plague – A review |
title_short | Deliberate release: Plague – A review |
title_sort | deliberate release: plague – a review |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7270574/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32835180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jobb.2020.02.001 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT ansariissmaeel deliberatereleaseplagueareview AT griergareth deliberatereleaseplagueareview AT byersmark deliberatereleaseplagueareview |