Yersinia Pestis: The Cause Of The Bubonic Plague

Most know it as the plague that wiped out about 50% of England’s population, but this epidemic actually originated in China circa the 1330s. China was big in the trading industry, its ships infected with the disease stricken fleas on black rats carried this disease down the Mediterranean, over to Europe in the 1340’s. This is when the Bubonic Plague became a big part of history as the “Black Death”. After 5 long years and 1/3 of Europe’s people deceased, the worst of it was over. Although, the disease didn’t disappear until the 1600s. This highly contagious zoonotic disease (like avian or swine flu) also has a very fast mortality rate. Killing someone in under 24 hours in some cases. There are three different types to this painful plague that …show more content…
This virus is a gram negative rod shaped bacteria classified as coccobacillus. A coccobacillus has short rods that may be confused for a cocci shape. Y. Pestis is a nonmotile, nonsporulating, facultative anaerobe. The bacteria settles in the midgut of a flea and its plasmid is phospholipase D lined membrane allows the bacteria to survive among the digestive and intestinal juices. When the bacteria reproduces in the gut it forms a mass in the stomach going up into the esophagus, essentially blocking its gastroesophageal region with clotted blood from when it tries to feed on its host. Because of this blockage food does not get digested and the flea has an insatiable hunger making it want to bite and feed more than usual. This can also lead the flea to eventually die of starvation. When the flea bites its unfortunate host it regurgitates its infected ingested blood into the site causing infection. The bacteria then travels through the cutaneous membrane to the lymph system and then multiplies in cells damaging their immune defenses. This bacteria is very resistant to being killed. It can withstand phagocytosis and once inside it reproduces inside the phagocyte’s cell and kill it! It has an ability to attach easily to cells surfaces and penetrate to reproduce. The outer membrane proteins help prevent an inflammatory response of the body so your …show more content…
If you contract primary septicemic plague you may not even experience any symptoms and just die unexpectedly. But if you do have symptoms they are chest pain, shock, and bleeding beneath the skin. Flue like symptoms show with the bubonic plague; fever, chills, muscle ache, and very very swollen lymph nodes (buboes). Similar to Pneumonic Plague symptoms are flu-like but with a cough, chest pain, and bloody sputum, and of course pneumonia. The buboes are lymph nodes found in the neck, armpit, and groin regions. Seizures from shock will usually happen with any form of the plague from all the bacteria replicating in your body. This disease is very painful! Your body can start decaying before you have even past! Black patches show up on the skin from subcutaneous bleeding, mainly in Septicemic plague. If you had the unfortunate luck of contracting the bubonic plague today it might be a little hard to diagnose seems how the symptoms are of that of the regular flu. And even if you developed the buboes, there are other diseases more common to check for first that also develop the buboes, like cat-scratch fever and