The oldest confirmed case of the illness shows the bubonic plague circulated in North Africa thousands of years before the ...

In cases of plague since the late 1800s—including an outbreak in Madagascar in 2017—rats and other rodents helped spread the disease. If Y. pestis infects rats, the bacterium can pass to fleas ...

A change to a single gene in the bacterium Yersinia pestis has enabled one of the world’s most notorious pathogens to survive for centuries.

The plague — which in the mid-14th century was also known as the Black Death — devastated swaths of Europe, killing millions in under a decade. One of the puzzles surrounding this ancient ...

Reducing the copies of one gene in the bubonic plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, made it less deadly but potentially more transmissible ...

The Bubonic Plague killed millions in Europe between 1347 and 1353 . Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent. ... Rats may not have caused the Black Death, study suggests.

Nile rats and Black Death: Mummy reveals bubonic plague in Egypt 3,290 years ago. ... The bubonic plague is infamous for causing rapid and widespread deaths across Europe during the 14th century.

Body lice may have helped spread bubonic plague. A study suggests that body lice are capable of transmitting Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. June 1, 2024 More than 1 year ago ...

The bubonic plague is caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that was likely first introduced in North America around 1900 from rats on ships coming from South Asia, according to Timothy Brewer, M ...

In 1900, plague was introduced on rat-infested ships that sailed from affected areas, causing epidemics in port cities such as San Francisco, where racist public health policies wrongly blamed the ...