Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Edited* by Rita R. Colwell, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, and approved July 6, 2011 (received for review October 24, 2010)
Abstract
Plague (caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) is a zoonotic reemerging infectious disease with reservoirs in rodent populations worldwide. Using one-half of a century of unique data (1949–1995) from Kazakhstan on plague dynamics, including data on the main rodent host reservoir (great gerbil), main vector (flea), human cases, and external (climate) conditions, we analyze the full ecoepidemiological (bubonic) plague system. We show that two epidemiological threshold quantities play key roles: one threshold relating to the dynamics in the host reservoir, and the second threshold relating to the spillover of the plague bacteria into the human population.
- climate forcing
- generalized threshold model
- wildlife reservoir of Yersinia pestis
- spillover to the human population
Footnotes
- 1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: n-samia{at}northwestern.edu or n.c.stenseth{at}bio.uio.no.
Author contributions: N.I.S. and N.C.S. designed research; N.I.S., H.H., M.B., and N.C.S. performed research; N.I.S. analyzed data; N.I.S., K.L.K., H.H., V.A., M.B., K.-S.C., and N.C.S. wrote the paper; and N.I.S. and H.H. derived the two threshold quantities.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1015946108/-/DCSupplemental.
Dynamics of the plague–wildlife–human system in Central Asia are controlled by two epidemiological thresholds
Article Classifications
- Biological Sciences
- Environmental Sciences
Sign up for Article Alerts
Jump to section
You May Also be Interested in
Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Archaeologists have long tried to define the transition between the two time periods.
Image credit: Ceri Shipton.
Jonathon Yuly, David Beratan, and Peng Zhang investigate how electron bifurcation reactions work.
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.