LogFAQs > #945961955

adjl posted...

Oh, it's all over the place. There was actually a sizable outbreak of it in Madagascar like a year ago. It's just fairly easy to treat with antibiotics these days, and is really only dangerous if left untreated (in which case you're probably going to die).

Recently, two strains of Yersinia pestis were found to exhibit antibiotic resistance. Y. pestis 17/95 carries 8 antibiotic resistances on a plasmid of 150 kb called pIP1202 and is reported to exhibit high-level resistance to eight antimicrobial agents used for treatment and some prophylactic drugs. It is also resistant to some of the typical alternative drugs such as ampicillin, kanamycin, and spectinomycin. Whilst Y. pestis 16/95 has only streptomycin resistance on a plasmid of 40 kb called pIP1203, it remains susceptible to other antibiotic treatment.

Currently, both of these strains are confined to Madagascar. If they reach another country in which the plague is endemic, antibiotic resistant genes could be spread to the endemic plague population.

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