title: Plague: A Disease Which Changed the Path of Human Civilization.
abstract: Plague caused by Yersinia pestis is a zoonotic infection, i.e., it is maintained in wildlife by animal reservoirs and on occasion spills over into human populations, causing outbreaks of different entities. Large epidemics of plague, which have had significant demographic, social, and economic consequences, have been recorded in Western European historical documents since the sixth century. Plague has remained in Europe for over 1400 years, intermittently disappearing, yet it is not clear if there were reservoirs for Y. pestis in Western Europe or if the pathogen was rather reimported on different occasions from Asian reservoirs by human agency. The latter hypothesis thus far seems to be the most plausible one, as it is sustained by both ecological and climatological evidence, helping to interpret the phylogeny of this bacterium.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. barbara.bramanti@ibv.uio.no.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bramanti
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Nils Chr
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Stenseth
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Walløe
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.|State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 102206, Changping, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lei
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002980:Climate; D004197:Disease Reservoirs / Q000145:classification; D004199:Disease Vectors / Q000145:classification; D005060:Europe; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D058873:Pandemics / Q000266:history*; D010930:Plague / Q000266:history* / Q000382:microbiology / Q000635:transmission; D015010:Yersinia pestis / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D015047:Zoonoses / Q000266:history
keywords: Civilization; Historic; Outbreak; Pandemics; Yersinia pestis