Parasites and Plague

I have just spent a couple of days at the beautiful University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. It was fun being around researchers such as Sam Loker, who view the world from a perspective of pathogens. I thought that Leigh Ann and I were the only two.  However,  unlike me they focus on intestinal nematodes, which are really disgusting (this is coming from a microbiologist). So we swapped stories of what you can catch when touring the world and I learned to never swim or wade in any lakes in Nepal because nematode larvae burrow through your skin.  I also learned that there are bragging rights associated with nematode infections.  This is different from microbial infections.  For example, I would never brag about catching plague or anthrax but that might be from lack of opportunity as much as any other reason.

For the talk I gave at UNM, I did an analysis of the deaths that have resulted from major epidemics that have occurred throughout the world during the past 700 years. Nearly half of the deaths are from bacteria and most of those deaths were caused by plague. The only epidemic that has killed more people than plague is influenza.   People in New Mexico still catch plague, primarily from their cats.  However plague epidemics don't occur any more because we now have antibiotics.  Their are strains of plague that are resistant to almost everything.  

My dad helped me understand a plague transmission model several years ago. (Turned out it was a lot like an electrical circuit and my dad designs those). Plague is transmitted between c/rats and humans by fleas.  Rather than killing the rats (I couldn't kill cats), it was better to feed them and lure them away from human populations because if they die, then their fleas move from the dead bodies to living human bodies. 

I guess this means that if antibiotics ever become completely useless against plague, we should store some rat and cat food for emergency situations.  Fortunately, we aren't quite that bad off....yet.