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Tag: infectious disease

  • Plague Found in China, City of Yumen Sealed Off

    Plague Found in China, City of Yumen Sealed Off

    Chinese state media reported Tuesday that the city of Yumen has been sealed off since last week, after a 38-year-old man died of bubonic plague.

    Yumen, which has a population of roughly 30,000, is situated in the northwestern province of Gansu, and is presently surrounded by police at roadblocks. No residents are allowed to leave the established perimeter, and travelers are being forced to take detours, according to China Central Television (CCTV).

    CCTV reported that Yumen “has enough rice, flour and oil to supply all its residents for up to one month.” China Daily newspaper revealed that “four quarantine sectors” have been set up in Yumen, where 151 people are being held for observation. CCTV added that “local residents and those in quarantine are all in stable condition.” No new plague cases have been reported in the city.

    The sole plague fatality in Yumen occurred after a man came into contact with a dead marmot. Marmots are similar to squirrels, though larger, and can carry plague-infected fleas in their fur.

    Bubonic plague is a bacterial infection of the lymphatic system, usually resulting from the bite of an infected rat flea, scientifically known as Xenopsylla cheopis. Plague symptoms appear suddenly, usually two to five days after exposure, and symptoms include general malaise, chills, high fever, muscle cramps, a painful lymph gland swelling called a bubo, seizures and gangrene.

    Roughly two-thirds of untreated plague cases result in death, though several types of antibiotics are effective in treating the infection, and when administered can cut the mortality rate to 1-15%. According to the U.S. Centers Centers of Disease Control, “human plague infections continue to occur in the western United States, but significantly more cases occur in parts of Africa and Asia.”

    Here is a clip documenting a case of domestic plague that a man contracted in Oregon:

    In China, plague is classified as a Class A infectious disease, the “most serious under China’s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases,” according to the Xinhua news agency.

    Once known as the “Black Death,” bubonic plague ravaged Europe in the 14th century, leaving an estimated 25 million dead, or roughly 30–60% of the population.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Biologist Discovers New Species of Tick… Up Nose

    ScienceDaily reported that American biologist Tony Goldberg regularly travels to Kibale National Park in western Uganda to watch how infectious diseases travel throughout the wilds, but something he did not anticipate was finding an undiscovered species of tick up his nose. A Wisconsin native and familiar with his local tick population, he’d never heard of anyone having a tick in their nose, so he did some extensive research.

    “When I got back to the U.S., I realized I had a stowaway,” he said. “When you first realize you have a tick up your nose, it takes a lot of willpower not to claw your face off.”

    The findings were published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, which may be viewed here in its entirety.

    Goldberg is a professor of pathobiological science at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and associate director for research in the UW-Madison Global Health Institute, so he has a little experience dealing with intrusive insects.

    After carefully removing the tick, he sealed it in a test tube and froze it. When he and a Texas A&M University colleague sequenced the tick’s DNA, they discovered it had no matches in the database. “Either it’s a species of tick that is known but has never been sequenced, or it’s a new species of tick,” he wrote in the study.

    Chimpanzees, common in the Kibale National Park, deal with nose ticks all the time, and Goldberg’s tick was not the first to latch onto a human. In order to determine just how frequent the nose ticks are at Kibale, Goldberg and Harvard chimp expert Richard Wrangham took a series of high-res photos to study chimp noses. In about one of five chimps’ noses was a tick.

    Believed to be of the genus Amblyomma, Goldberg suggests that the nose tick “could be an underappreciated, indirect, and somewhat weird way in which people and chimps share pathogens.”

    Since the tick avoided detection as Goldberg flew internationally, if the frequency of global travel is factored in, nose ticks could easily spread from Uganda to the rest of the world. The ticks likely evolved to target the nose to escape being combed out through regular chimpanzee grooming.

    [Image via The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene]