Types of Plague

Posted by editor2 on Monday 06 Apr 2009

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Plague is a serious, sometimes fatal infection of rodents caused by Yersinia pestis and accidentally transmitted to humans by the bite of a flea that has bitten an infected animal. There are three types of plague namely bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic. Signs and symptoms normally vary depending on the type of the plague. It is possible to develop more than one type of plague at a time.

Bubonic plague

Signs and symptoms of bubonic plague usually appear within two to eight days of a plague-infected fleabite. After biting you, the bacteria move through your lymphatic system, infecting the first lymph node they reach. The affected enlarged lymph node is normally 1 to 10 centimeters in diameter, painful, swollen and warm to the touch. It can cause severe pain that you cannot move the impacted part of your body.

The bubo or the enlarged lymph node usually develops in your groin, but it may appear in your armpit or neck, depending on where the flea bit you. The signs and symptoms of bubonic plague include sudden onset of fever and chills, muscle aches, headache, fatigue or malaise and buboes or swollen, painful and warm lymph nodes.

Pneumonic plague

Pneumonic plague is the least common form of plague, which can develop as a hindrance of another type of plague or by breathing infectious droplets coughed into the air by a person or animal. Even though, it is the most rapidly fatal.

Early signs and symptoms, which normally develop within a few hours to a few days after inhaling contaminated droplets, include signs of pneumonia, including chest pain, difficulty in breathing and a cough with bloody sputum, nausea and vomiting, weakness and high fever. If proper antibiotic treatment is not administered within a day after signs and symptoms appear, the infection is prone to be fatal.

Septicemic plague

When plague bacteria multiply in your bloodstream that is the time for septicemic plague to occur. Buboes may be present, if septicemic plague affects as a complication of bubonic plague. The signs and symptoms include shock, abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting, fever and chills, bleeding from your mouth, nose or rectum, or under your skin and blackening and death of tissue or gangrene in your extremities, most commonly your fingers, nose and toes.