Adult dies of plague in Colorado


By Greg Botelho, CNN



Updated 0048 GMT (0748 HKT) August 6, 2015



















Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
Rats are one of the many rodent species that carry the plague. The disease is typically spread to people through a bite from a rodent flea. Although recent research may exonerate rats as primarily responsible for the Black Death, and instead put the blame on gerbils, rats probably played a role in that and other plague epidemics.
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Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
The plague doctor is in. The hat, goggles, gown and beak-like mask identified a person as a plague doctor in the Middle Ages. The uniform was used for protection; the beak contained herbs and perfumes intended to cover the stench associated with plague disease.
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Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
A patient with plague symptoms, foreground, awaits test results with his mother at New Delhi's Disease Hospital in 1994. Pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs, is the most serious form of the disease and the only way it can spread directly between people. A plague outbreak in India in 1994 was among the most serious in the world in recent decades.
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Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
Taylor Gaes died of the plague this spring, a day before he would have turned 16. Officials think he was infected from a flea bite on his family's ranch in Larimer County, Colorado. The high school sophomore began having flu-like symptoms after he pitched in a baseball game. Although plague remains rare, it is often mistaken for the flu because it causes fever and chills.
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Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
The bacterium that is responsible for the plague can sometimes infect the blood, causing the hands, feet, nose and lips to become gangrenous and black. This form of the disease is almost always fatal if not treated with antibiotics.
Hide Caption
1 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
A map shows reported cases of human plague in the United States from 1970 to 2012. Nearly all cases occur in the western U.S., for reasons that are not entirely understood. Plague first came to the U.S. in 1900 via rats on steamships from Asia.
Hide Caption
2 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
This is what causes the plague. Yersinia pestis bacteria, colored in purple, are seen on the spines inside a flea's digestive system.
Hide Caption
3 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
Rats are one of the many rodent species that carry the plague. The disease is typically spread to people through a bite from a rodent flea. Although recent research may exonerate rats as primarily responsible for the Black Death, and instead put the blame on gerbils, rats probably played a role in that and other plague epidemics.
Hide Caption
4 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
The plague doctor is in. The hat, goggles, gown and beak-like mask identified a person as a plague doctor in the Middle Ages. The uniform was used for protection; the beak contained herbs and perfumes intended to cover the stench associated with plague disease.
Hide Caption
5 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
A patient with plague symptoms, foreground, awaits test results with his mother at New Delhi's Disease Hospital in 1994. Pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs, is the most serious form of the disease and the only way it can spread directly between people. A plague outbreak in India in 1994 was among the most serious in the world in recent decades.
Hide Caption
6 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
Taylor Gaes died of the plague this spring, a day before he would have turned 16. Officials think he was infected from a flea bite on his family's ranch in Larimer County, Colorado. The high school sophomore began having flu-like symptoms after he pitched in a baseball game. Although plague remains rare, it is often mistaken for the flu because it causes fever and chills.
Hide Caption
7 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
The bacterium that is responsible for the plague can sometimes infect the blood, causing the hands, feet, nose and lips to become gangrenous and black. This form of the disease is almost always fatal if not treated with antibiotics.
Hide Caption
1 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
A map shows reported cases of human plague in the United States from 1970 to 2012. Nearly all cases occur in the western U.S., for reasons that are not entirely understood. Plague first came to the U.S. in 1900 via rats on steamships from Asia.
Hide Caption
2 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
This is what causes the plague. Yersinia pestis bacteria, colored in purple, are seen on the spines inside a flea's digestive system.
Hide Caption
3 of 7


Plague: a scourge of biblical proportions 7 photos
Rats are one of the many rodent species that carry the plague. The disease is typically spread to people through a bite from a rodent flea. Although recent research may exonerate rats as primarily responsible for the Black Death, and instead put the blame on gerbils, rats probably played a role in that and other plague epidemics.
Hide Caption
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Story highlights
Agency: Adult who died may have gotten plague from fleas on a dead animal
The victim is the first person in Pueblo County to get the plague since 2004
A pit bull was at the center of a recent plague outbreak elsewhere in Colorado



(CNN)Centuries after ravaging millions, the plague has come to modern-day Colorado -- leaving a devastated family behind, after their loved one succumbed to the disease.

The Pueblo City-County Health Department announced Wednesday that an adult had died from the plague, a disease that has a long and sordid history, albeit not one typically associated with modern times or developed countries like the United States.

The health department didn't detail who died, beyond that it was an adult.

The agency said in a press release that "the individual may have contracted the disease from fleas on a dead rodent or animal." It's the first such case of someone in Pueblo County contracting the plague since 2004.

How do we still have the plague?

"This highlights the importance to protect yourself and your pets from the exposure of fleas that carry plague," said Sylvia Proud, the city-county public health director.

A dead prairie dog in the western part of Pueblo County is the only animal, thus far, confirmed to have the plague in the immediate area.

The county isn't the only part of Colorado recently afflicted with the plague.

A teenager in Larimer County died earlier in 2015 from the plague. That was the year's first such case in Colorado, after eight in 2014 -- which was a major jump from the one instance reported in the state over the previous seven years -- according to the state's Department of Public Health and Environment.

None of the 17 cases reported between 2005 and 2015 were in Pueblo County.

Plague kills dozens in Madagascar

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, in a report released April 30, that a pit bull was at the heart of a plague outbreak that sickened four people last year.

That report was especially significant in that it suggested that there might have been a human-to-human transmission. That hasn't happened in the United States since 1924.














Plague patient zero is a pit bull01:43
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The dog-to-human transmission was unexpected, according to Colorado's Tri-County Health Department. The team that investigated the case said they could only find one other case of dog-to-human transmission in the medical literature. That was a 2009 case in China.

The CDC says about seven people get the plague -- over 80% of which have been in the bubonic form -- every year in the United States. While it can be life-threatening, with modern medicine such as antibiotics and antimicrobials it is usually not deadly, as it was in the Middle Ages when millions died.

In plague blame game, gerbils replace rats as prime suspects