Genetic profile of 6th century plague offers clues to how pandemics spread
Lessons in mutation and emergence of novel germs from sequencing of 6th century scourge
The results, published in medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases on Tuesday, showed that in each case, the pathogen causing bubonic plague had been transferred from rodents to humans. Researchers concluded that rodent species worldwide continue to be reservoirs for the pathogen, suggesting a risk that new plagues could emerge in the future.
The transmission of the pathogen can be likened to the current bird flu threat unfolding in China, Professor Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney told the South China Morning Post.
“There is an analogy with influenza in wild birds. Every now and again these wild bird strains can jump out into humans via poultry and cause human disease in the same way they jump from rats,” said Professor Holmes.
Two people have died in Hong Kong from the deadly H7N9 strain of bird flu and a third remains in hospital. The sale of live chickens has been banned in the city for three weeks and 20,000 live birds were on Tuesday culled in a local wholesale market.
The study confirmed a distinct version of the bacterium Yersinia pestis, previously confirmed as having caused the Black Death in the fourteenth century, was also the trigger of the Plague of Justinian some 800 years earlier. The pandemic is considered to be the first of the three human plagues and is believed to have first emerged in the sixth century in the ancient Byzantine capital Constantinople.