A contagious, often fatal epidemic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted from person to person or by the bite of fleas from an infected host, especially a rat, and characterized by chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and the formation of buboes.

 

Sign and Symptoms

the most common form of plague. It is characterized by painful buboes in the axilla, groin, or neck; fever often rising to 106° F (41.11° C); prostration with a rapid, thready pulse; hypotension; delirium; and bleeding into the skin from the superficial blood vessels.

 

Pathogenesis

The symptoms are caused by an endotoxin released by a bacillus, Yersinia pestis, usually introduced into the body by the bite of a rat flea that has bitten an infected rat. Inoculation with plague vaccine confers partial immunity; infection provides lifetime immunity.

 

Treatment

Treatment includes antibiotics, supportive nursing care, surgical drainage of buboes, isolation, and stringent precautions against spread of the disease

 

Management

Conditions favor a plague epidemic when a large infected rodent population lives with a large nonimmune human population in a damp, warm climate. Improved sanitary conditions and eradication of rats and other rodent reservoirs of Y. pestis may prevent outbreaks of the disease.