Posted on 11/22/2001 1:23:03 AM PST by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:02:22 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
November 22, 2001 -- People may have been killed over the last several years by inhalation anthrax - with officials never detecting the cause of death, medical experts told The Post.
"By and large, there wouldn't be that many cases . . . but it's reasonable to assume some would have been missed," said Dr. Philip Tierno, director of microbiology and diagnostic immunology at NYU Hospital.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
P.S. I'm still confused about why a domestic terrorist would have attacked American Media in Florida. And think there is some disconnect there.
Finally, does anybody know what happened to the guys in New Jersey that were arrested and their apartment searched?
"Witnesses said the arrest followed a three-hour search by FBI and immigration agents of an apartment where four "Middle Eastern" men were living.
The arrested man, identified by his brother Ilyas Chaudry as Allah Rakha, was understood to have been detained by US immigration authorities. FBI agents seized several bags of potential evidence from the flat."
Experts doubt lots of inhalation anthrax has gone unnoticed in past
The Associated Press
Before the spate of anthrax-by-mail cases began, inhalation anthrax was reported to be extremely rare in the United States. But the case of an elderly Connecticut woman is the second within a month without any apparent connection to the mail.
Could it be that inhalation anthrax was more common than everybody thought, and only appeared to be so rare because doctors were overlooking cases before anthrax hit the news?
Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, called that unlikely at a briefing Wednesday. And in telephone interviews, bioterrorism experts agreed.
"The odd case, perhaps, could escape notice," said Dr. Greg Poland, an anthrax expert at the Mayo Clinic. "But any appreciable number, I couldn't believe it."
Before a Florida man was found to have inhalation anthrax last month, because of a tainted letter, only 18 cases of the disease had been reported in the past century in the United States. None had been reported since 1976. People have generally been infected through exposure to contaminated animal hides or hair.
Relatively few people would ever be exposed to a dangerous dose of anthrax spores in the first place, experts said. What is more, they said, a case of inhalation anthrax is dramatic and leaves its signature in chest X-rays and CT scans, in the bloody fluid that a needle withdraws from around the lungs, and in studies of the patient's blood.
In blood tests, a result positive for anthrax "would be like slapping you in the face with a hot poker. You don't have to look for it," said Dr. Craig Smith of the Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Ga.
The rapid decline of a person who dies a pneumonia-type death would ordinarily lead to an autopsy, Poland said. In that examination, inhalation anthrax "would be pretty hard to miss," he said.
Hmmm?
Can inhalation anthrax occur from natural sources? Scientists say it's rare, but they're beginning to worry it might be less rare than they think.
The last recorded inhalation anthrax death in the United States occurred in 1976 — and inhaled anthrax was traced to only 18 fatalities over the last century, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The anthrax organism afflicts cattle, sheep and goats, which can ingest it during grazing. If it forms into a spore, it can survive for decades — then spring to life inside living tissue.
Recent animal outbreaks have occurred west of the Mississippi River. In one case, veterinarians found surviving anthrax spores in goat meat in a Texas rancher's freezer.
"He was planning to barbecue it that weekend," said Prof. Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University, an anthrax expert. "If they hadn't caught it, he might well have become infected."
Because inhaled anthrax in humans is so rare, because it resembles pneumonia and because the elderly are more susceptible, anthrax deaths could easily occur without a doctor realizing it.
The CDC would never get a report, Hugh-Jones said. "There could well be cases out there they're missing."
Bob Port
Double Hmmmmm....?
I also suspect that rural people with an overwhelming pneumonia might not get identified if they had anthrax. I remember early in the HIV crisis, that we were told that probably some of the young men dying of "viral pneumonia" were probably suffering from this disease (this is before the blood test) and had PCP pneumonia. At that time, PCP pneumonia was usually only seen in cancer pateints and in vietnam orphans. I remember my only case was a lymphoma patient with "viral pneumonia". We couldn't do the culture, so treated him and he got better.
Ditto for anthrax
I suspect that there have been Anthrax infections for years, and the good docs like you cured it with the antibiotics you prescribed for infections. The older and more fragile patients died of pneumonia from the agent, and as we know, autopsies are seldom if ever performed on elderly patients who die of pneumonia!
Where did you read that it matched?
TV news report on Wednesday, the CDC culture results.
Understood about any aerobic gram positive rod often being presumptively dismissed as Bacillus subtilis, but if CDC has a DNA match with the other B. anthracis cultures, then this seems like a terror related case not a background noise case.
I wasn't referring to the Conn. case. I was referring to many past cases years before the terrorists where anthrax was the potential problem and was never cultured.
Your mentioning of Bacillus s brought back memories of a local vet who in the early 1980's, supposedly had a severe case of skin Bacillus s and was treated with Bactrim IV sent out as an investigational drug via a special agreement with FDA.
The Bactrim IV worked and he was discharged from the hospital with Bactrim po for about 30 days. He had the infection on his thigh, and had gotten it apparently when he lifted up an infected sheep to give it a shot of sometype. The sheep apparently had an skin infection and the spores went through the vets jeans to his leg where he had an abrasion.
Dr. Isadore (sp) was on Fox News this weekend and discussed that many cases of Anthrax were probably never diagnosed and either treated successfully or the the patient died of pneumonia. If the patient was elderly or had an immune problem, it was just marked up as pneumonia as the cause of death.
The rapid drop of blood pressure in inhaled anthrax may have been not dianosed for decades when rural Americans got exposed to inhalation anthras. It was diagnosed as pneumonia and many were dead before or shortly after being admitted to the hospital!
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