“In Europe”, therefore also in Italy, “the plague does not exist. It has been eradicated. No cases of plague have been described since the Second World War. Don't panic”. This is how Nicola Decaro, director of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Bari and president of the European College of Microbiology and Veterinary Medicine, comments to Adnkronos Health on the case of bubonic plague reported in Oregon, in the United States, in a person who she would have been infected by her cat.”If you return with a cat from an area where the plague is endemic”, the advice is to “contact the vet” only in the presence of symptoms. As is always done, he comments, “when the cat is sick”.
It is always “the same plague” of the Middle Ages and of Manzoni's 'The Betrothed'. “Human plague is an infectious disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium – explains Decaro – a very serious form which manifests itself in humans as bubonic or pneumonic plague. The bacterium attacks the lymph nodes, causing them to increase in volume and ulcerate them: hence bubonic. The pulmonary form has respiratory symptoms. Classically it is a disease of wild rodents and, in the past, it has caused very serious epidemics especially following contact with infected rats and, more often, with fleas from these rodents”. Having disappeared in our latitudes, “the plague resists only in some Asian and African territories, but also in part of South America and the United States, where there are some susceptible species” which make it difficult to eradicate it.
“The reservoirs of the disease are in fact small mammals such as wild rodents, but also mustelids such as the skunk, the mink and the ferret. The cat – continues the expert – can occasionally become infected through contact with the infected rat or, more rarely, from the bite of a rat flea. The cat develops the disease like humans and transmits the infection to humans directly, from the lesions developed – as it seems in this case – more than for the flea. Even the dog could transmit the disease, but less than the cat, because rodents are the cat's prey.” The disease is a rare event. “In the last 50 years, in the United States there have been 500 cases of plague in humans and 10 % is transmitted with certainty by the cat – recalls the professor, who is a member of the Italian Society of Veterinary Sciences (Sisvet) – There have been 14 human deaths between 2000 and 2020. The disease is less deadly because we have antibiotics, but it is still necessary early diagnosis, because the bacterium is aggressive and can quickly worsen clinical conditions, making therapy ineffective”.
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