Research concerning Yersinia pestis and its significance in military medicine / 解放军医学杂志

ABSTRACT

As the military medicine progresses, the scope of protective medicine against biological threats should be extended to any facets that can cause biological threats, including biowarfare, bioterrorisms, invasion of alien organisms, loss of biological resources, genetically modified organisms, and emerging infectious diseases. Yersinia pestis is the pathogen for a typical zoonotic disease, plague, and it is also one of important biowarfare or bioterrorism agents. In history, this pathogen once caused three pandemics, and it was employed several times in war causing infection of military personnels many times. Currently, plague is distributed in Asia, former Soviet Union region, Africa and America. In China, there are 12 kinds of natural plague foci at present, distributing in 19 provinces (regions) and covering about 15% of our land area. Plague surveillance demonstrated that animal plague is active in some natural foci, area of plague foci is increasing gradually and extending to the border of cities, indicating that we have faced a great challenge for plague prevention and control. After 9/11 terrorist attack in U. S. A., studies on Y. pestis grew very rapidly and the progress has laid a solid foundation for researches on other bioterrorism-associated pathogens. Source-tracing database for microbial forensics analysis of Y. pestis and the rapid no-site detection method for this pathogen are also excellent experience for establishing other bioterrorism agents.