Skip to main content
Help Center Community Shop

Pneumonic Plague in Grand Canyon National Park...

Permanently deleted user
Grand Canyon National Park issued new precautions for visitors after lab tests indicated that a wildlife biologist had died from pneumonic plague. The biologist, Eric York, 37, was found dead Nov. 2 in his home on the canyon's South Rim, and the preliminary lab results were reported today. Pamela Walls, parks spokeswoman, emphasized that York had limited contact with visitors and that, in any event, person-to-person transmission of the potentially fatal disease was highly unlikely. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she said, such transmission has not been observed in the U.S. since 1924. However, because the disease, carried by fleas that feed off infected rodents, can infect humans through flea bites or by direct contact with infected animals, Walls said, officials are adding new precautions to their usual advice to avoid feeding or approaching wild animals. Among the recommendations: Use insect repellent when visiting or working in areas where plague might be active or rodents might be present. Control fleas on pets by using flea collars or flea sprays. Prevent pets from roaming loose. Avoid exposure to rodent burrows and fleas and wild animals. Do not handle sick or dead animals. Symptoms of pneumonic plague can include fever, headache, chest pain, cough, bloody saliva and swollen lymph nodes, officials said. The incubation period can be several days. Walls said 49 people, including co-workers and roommates but no park visitors, are known to have had contact with York, and they have been put on antibiotics. So far none has shown symptoms, she added. Walls said she wasn't aware of any prior infections or deaths involving the disease at the park. )
0

Comments

4 comments

Date Votes
  • bigtire
    There are two or three cases of pneumonic plaigue a year in the southwest US.
    0
  • Permanently deleted user
    quote:Originally posted by bigtire
    There are two or three cases of pneumonic plaigue a year in the southwest US.
    Probly comming in from the illegals!
    0
  • dolfan
    quote:Originally posted by ECC
    According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she said, such transmission has not been observed in the U.S. since 1924. Plague in wildlife in the mid-West is not news. I remember my first trip to the Canyon back in '88. We were given literature and advice on how to avoid transmission.

    Bigtire's post contradicts the quote from ECC's article, though.
    0
  • AZEX
    It's systemic and species-wide in northern AZ, primarily rooted in the prairie dog population. Many of them are asymptomatic carriers of the bubonic plague bacterium. It's not pneumonic in that he didn't get it from airborne transmission, but rather, was most likely bitten by an infected flea.

    Wikipedia:

    Pathology
    When a flea bites a human and contaminates the wound with regurgitated blood, the plague carrying bacteria are passed into the tissue. Y. pestis can reproduce inside cells, so even if phagocytised, they can still survive. Once in the body, the bacteria can enter the lymphatic system, which drains interstitial fluid. Plague bacteria secrete several toxins, one of which is known to cause dangerous beta-adrenergic blockade.

    Y. pestis spreads through the lymphatics of the infected human until it reaches a lymph node, where it stimulates severe hemorrhagic inflammation causing the lymph nodes to expand. The expansion of lymph nodes is the cause of the characteristic "bubo" associated with the disease.

    Lymphatics ultimately drain into the bloodstream and as a result the plague bacteria may enter the blood where they can travel to virtually any part of the body. In septicemic plague, there is bleeding into the skin and other organs, which creates black patches on the skin. There are bite-like bumps on the skin, commonly red and sometimes white in the center. Untreated, septicemic plague is universally fatal, but early treatment with antibiotics reduces the mortality rate to between 4 and 15 percent.[1][2][3] People who die from this form of plague often die on the same day symptoms first appear.

    The pneumonic plague infects the lungs, and with that infection comes the possibility of person-to-person transmission through respiratory droplets. The incubation period for pneumonic plague is usually between two and four days, but can be as little as a few hours. The initial symptoms, of headache, weakness, and coughing with hemoptysis, are indistinguishable from other respiratory illnesses. Without diagnosis and treatment, the infection can be fatal in one to six days; mortality in untreated cases is 50-90%.[4]

    It's actually a very fascinating bacterium.

    D.
    0

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Recent Activity