Health officials in the Four Corners region continue to wrestle with a persistent plague pandemic that has the potential to infect humans.<\/p>\n
Northern Arizona University undergraduate\u00a0Bret Clawson<\/strong>\u00a0is tracking the plague\u00a0in prairie dog populations to better understand the bacterium\u2019s persistence and prevent widespread outbreaks.<\/p>\n Clawson, a chemistry and biomedical science double major, collected two species of fleas that live on prairie dogs to learn more about the genetic structure of the plague. It is research that may provide insight into how fleas move in rodent populations.<\/p>\n \u201cAny population of rodents can have a plague outbreak,\u201d Clawson said. \u201cThis research helps county health departments determine if insecticidal dustings are necessary and when to treat to minimize the likelihood of an outbreak.\u201d<\/p>\n Between 1,000 and 2,000 cases of human plague are reported worldwide each year, and plague is present in wild rodent populations throughout the United States. And there may be a connection between rodent outbreaks and human infection\u201414 percent of human plague occurrences in the United States coincide with plague outbreaks in prairie dogs.<\/p>\n \u201cPrevious studies have shown the greatest density of contemporary human cases of plague in the U.S. occurs in the Four Corners region,\u201d Clawson said. \u201cAnd prairie dog ranges overlap with the greatest concentration of plague cases.\u201d<\/p>\n Clawson\u2019s research builds on the work of\u00a0Paul Keim<\/strong>, director of NAU\u2019s Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics, and\u00a0Dave Wagner<\/strong>, NAU assistant professor of biological sciences,\u00a0who published a study<\/a>\u00a0that traced the plague from China along its path around the world.<\/p>\n Keim and Wagner pinpointed the plague\u2019s introduction to the western United States to the arrival of infected rats that scurried off ships in the ports of San Francisco more than a century ago. Clawson employed Keim and Wagner\u2019s research methods of genome mapping to better understand how plague persists in the region.<\/p>\n