Ancient Plague Strains in Kyrgyzstan

The process of mapping ancient Yersinia pestis (plague) strains along the central Asian mountain chain, or greater Himalayas continues. Up to now, most of the living ancient strains have been mapped in Tibet/western China and a few scattered other places (Cui et al, 2010).  Russian scholars have a released data on mapped ancient strains of Yersinia...

Presentations on the Plague from the European Association of Archaeologists, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016

I just discovered that most of the presentations from the "Plague in Diachronic and Interdisciplinary Perspective" session of the Europan Association of Archaeologists meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania on 2 September 2016 are now on YouTube.  I think I have collected them all here. Enjoy 3 hours of plague talks! Introduction-Plague in diachronic and Interdisciplinary perspective by...

War as a Driver in Tuberculosis Evolution

by Michelle Ziegler Russia has been all over the news lately. Beyond our recent election, increased Russian activity on the world stage has public health consequences for Europe and farther afield. It has been known for a long time that post-Soviet Russia had and continues to have serious public health problems. One of their particular...

Keeping Bronze Age Yersinia pestis in Perspective

by Michelle Ziegler The latest plague news to splash across headlines is the discovery of Yersinia pestis aDNA in seven Bronze Age remains from Eurasia.  The most important findings in this new study are not anthropological; they are evolutionary. This paper allows us to drop a couple more evolutionary mile markers. Finding  7% of the...

Plasmodium knowlesi: A New Ancient Malaria Parasite

There are over a hundred different species of the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasites in reptiles, birds and mammals. Being so widespread among terrestrial vertebrates, zoonotic transfer of Plasmodium has come at humans from multiple different sources. Plasmodium knowlesi had been known for some time as a parasite of long-tailed macaques but was not considered a significant human...

Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis in Former Soviet States

It has been known for some time that the former Soviet Union had a huge tuberculosis problem. The problem was so big that no one really knew how bad it was in the Soviet Union or is now in its successor states. Over the last couple months, three reports have appeared in Euro Surveillance and...

Western Iranian Plague Foci Still Active, 2011-2012

In a letter in this month's Emerging Infectious Diseases, an Iranian and French team of epidemiologists report that the old plague focus in western Iran bordering Kurdistan is still active. Between 1947 and 1966 there were nine human plague epidemics causing 156 human deaths.  The last recorded human case occurred in 1966 and in animals...

Asymptomatic Plague: Qinghai, China, 2005

Now that we know the Tibet-Qinghai plateau region is where Yersinia pestis originated and the region where subsequent pandemics arose, I think its time to look more closely at regional outbreaks and case studies. In this region, the marmot (Marmota himalayana) is the primary reservoir for Yersinia pestis. This large communal burrowing rodent is hunted by local...

The Great Pneumonic Plague of 1910-1911

The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911: Geopolitics of an Epidemic Disease by William C. Summers Yale U Press, 2012 Manchuria was a political mess at the turn of the 20th century. Although it was the homeland of the Qing dynasty, the Chinese considered it a backwater. Japan and Russia on the other hand saw it...