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Antibiotics are the best way to fight the plague—the same disease that killed millions of people in historical pandemics, most notably the Black Death. Because there is no vaccine, effective antibiotic treatments are one of the main reasons why this disease, which wiped out almost a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century, kills so few people today.
The plague is still around, however, with a worrying development; like other bacteria, it can be resistant to antibiotics. Instances of antibiotic-resistant plague remain exceedingly rare, but they’re not unheard of; scientists reported multiple instances in Madagascar in recent years. Dave Wagner, a researcher at the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute, led a study into the interaction of these two rare events—a pneumonic plague outbreak involving a strain resistant to an important antibiotic. The team found that resistant plague can be spread person-to-person, which was not previously known. |
