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History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19
During the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague or Black Death killed more than one third of Europe or 25 million people. Those afflicted died quickly and horribly from an unseen menace, spiking high fevers with suppurative buboes (swellings). Its causative agent is Yersinia pestis, creating recur...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32979306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.08.019 |
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author | Glatter, Kathryn A. Finkelman, Paul |
author_facet | Glatter, Kathryn A. Finkelman, Paul |
author_sort | Glatter, Kathryn A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | During the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague or Black Death killed more than one third of Europe or 25 million people. Those afflicted died quickly and horribly from an unseen menace, spiking high fevers with suppurative buboes (swellings). Its causative agent is Yersinia pestis, creating recurrent plague cycles from the Bronze Age into modern-day California and Mongolia. Plague remains endemic in Madagascar, Congo, and Peru. This history of medicine review highlights plague events across the centuries. Transmission is by fleas carried on rats, although new theories include via human body lice and infected grain. We discuss symptomatology and treatment options. Pneumonic plague can be weaponized for bioterrorism, highlighting the importance of understanding its clinical syndromes. Carriers of recessive familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) mutations have natural immunity against Y. pestis. During the Black Death, Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague, perhaps because Jews carried FMF mutations and died at lower plague rates than Christians. Blaming minorities for epidemics echoes across history into our current coronavirus pandemic and provides insightful lessons for managing and improving its outcomes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7513766 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75137662020-09-25 History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 Glatter, Kathryn A. Finkelman, Paul Am J Med Review During the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague or Black Death killed more than one third of Europe or 25 million people. Those afflicted died quickly and horribly from an unseen menace, spiking high fevers with suppurative buboes (swellings). Its causative agent is Yersinia pestis, creating recurrent plague cycles from the Bronze Age into modern-day California and Mongolia. Plague remains endemic in Madagascar, Congo, and Peru. This history of medicine review highlights plague events across the centuries. Transmission is by fleas carried on rats, although new theories include via human body lice and infected grain. We discuss symptomatology and treatment options. Pneumonic plague can be weaponized for bioterrorism, highlighting the importance of understanding its clinical syndromes. Carriers of recessive familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) mutations have natural immunity against Y. pestis. During the Black Death, Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague, perhaps because Jews carried FMF mutations and died at lower plague rates than Christians. Blaming minorities for epidemics echoes across history into our current coronavirus pandemic and provides insightful lessons for managing and improving its outcomes. Elsevier Inc. 2021-02 2020-09-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7513766/ /pubmed/32979306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.08.019 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 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 | Review Glatter, Kathryn A. Finkelman, Paul History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |
title | History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |
title_full | History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |
title_fullStr | History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |
title_full_unstemmed | History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |
title_short | History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |
title_sort | history of the plague: an ancient pandemic for the age of covid-19 |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32979306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.08.019 |
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