Multidrug-resistant plague strain
Cepa de peste resistente a múltiples antibióticos
- Date
- 1995 (publicado en 1997) · confidence high
- Place
- Antananarivo, Analamanga, Madagascar
- Credited to
- Marc Galimand, Elisabeth Carniel and the team at the Pasteur Institutes of Paris and Madagascar
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
The first Yersinia pestis strain resistant to the antibiotics of choice, found in a patient in Madagascar. The resistance, to eight antibiotics, lay on a plasmid transferable between bacteria.
It was isolated in 1995 and characterised at the Pasteur Institute; Galimand and colleagues' paper is from 1997 (NEJM). No spread of the strain was detected and the coordinate is that of the laboratory, not the patient.
What it led to
- surveillance of resistance in Y. pestis and plasmid transfer studies
- alternative treatments and contact prophylaxis in Malagasy outbreaks
- a warning about plague as a biological weapon