Yersinia pestis (formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a Gram-negative rod-shaped coccobacillus, a facultative anaerobic bacterium that can infect humans and other animals.[1]
Human Y. pestis infection takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic plagues.[1]All three forms are widely believed to have been responsible for a number of high-mortality epidemics throughout human history, including the Justinianic plague of the sixth century and the Black Death that accounted for the death of at least one-third of the European population between 1347 and 1353.[2][3] It has now been shown conclusively that these plagues originated in rodent populations in China.[4][5] More recently, Y. pestis has gained attention as a possible biological warfare agent and the CDC has classified it as a category A pathogen requiring preparation for a possible terrorist attack.[citation needed]
Y. pestis was discovered in 1894 by Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss/French physician and bacteriologist from the Pasteur Institute, during an epidemic of plague in Hong Kong.[6] Yersin was a member of the Pasteur school of thought. Kitasato Shibasaburo, a German-trained Japanese bacteriologist who practiced Koch's methodology, was also engaged at the time in findi
Yersinia pestis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
