Multidrug Resistance in Plague

Untreated, human plague is often fulminant and fatal,1 which reinforces its historical reputation as a devastating disease. Plague is a zoonosis of rodents and their fleas caused by Yersinia pestis, a member of the family Enterobacteriaceae. People are usually infected by bites from fleas found on rodents, occasionally by direct contact with infectious tissues or exudates, and rarely by respiratory droplets from a person or animal with pneumonic plague. Distinct foci of rodent plague are widely distributed in temperate and tropical areas of the world,2 resulting each year in both sporadic cases and outbreaks of human plague. From 1980 through . . .