posted 06-20-2001 11:26 PM            

Thursday, June 21 8:45 AM SGT
US health officials keeping an eye on potential bubonic plague exposure
DENVER, Colorado, June 20 (AFP) -
Colorado health officials are carefully examining reports of possible human exposure to bubonic plague that has killed a sizable portion of a nearby prairie dog colony.

While health officials have confirmed the prairie dogs do carry the deadly but treatable disease, they are unsure if colony neighbors -- including a unidentified man who died of plague-like symptoms Monday -- have contracted the disease, said Tisha Dowe, director of the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment.

"Right now, we're out checking other prairie dog colonies, too," Dowe said. "In the meantime, I've alerted doctors in the area to watch for symptoms just in case."

As a precaution, the humans are being treated with antibiotics while health officials investigate whether there is a connection with the rodents, Dowe said.

The county began spraying the colony to kill infected fleas which transmit the disease to humans. Health officials were alerted to the incident after a number of the rodents were found dead in the past week.

Bubonic plague, which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe in the 14th century, is a disease carried by rodents that is normally transmitted to humans through bites from infected fleas, said John Pape, a Colorado Department of Health and Environment epidemiologist who specializes in animal-borne illnesses.

The plague produces flu-like symptoms, including high fever, chills, headaches, severe fatigue, vomiting and tender or swollen lymph glands that appear two days to a week after exposure, Pape said.

"This is not the kind of flu that, when you get it, you wonder if you should go to the doctor," Pape said. "When you get it, you know it. It hits you that hard."

While the threat of a widespread epidemic is minimal, Pape and other health officials have issued warnings alerting the public and their pets to stay away from the rodents.

Pets, more likely to pick up the unwanted fleas as passengers, have transmitted the disease to more than half of the humans reported to have contracted the disease, Pape said.

"We get reports of rodent die-offs every year throughout the west, but it rarely makes the jump to humans," Pape said, "The last time a human contracted it from another human in the United States was in 1924. Unlike 14th-century Europe, we don't have infected rats in our homes."

Earlier this month, Colorado health officials confirmed other cases of plagued animals in the southern city of Pueblo and the Denver metropolitan area, but no human victims were reported.

Last year, one human was treated for the disease on the state's Western Slope.

The last confirmed bubonic plague death in the state was in 1999, one of three human cases in the state that year, Pape said.