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Diagnostic dilemma: A scientist caught plague from bacteria thought to be 'noninfectious'

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86% Informative

A 60-year-old man in Chicago died after contracting a weakened strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague.

Before this case, this weakened strain had never caused infections in humans.

A postmortem analysis on the patient revealed abnormally high levels of iron in his liver.

He also had between three and 13 times more iron in the blood than an average person.

Kamal Nahas works as a microscopist at the Diamond Light Source , the U.K. 's synchrotron.

When he's not writing, you can find him hunting for fossils on the Jurassic Coast .

Nahas holds a PhD in pathology from Cambridge and a master's degree in immunology from Oxford .

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