Inhalation Anthrax Victims are Older than Cutaneous Victims (my title)

J-Marshall.com ^ | 10-31-01 | Joshua Micah Marshall

[dogbyte12]

Put this down under the heading of 'he's not a doctor, and he shouldn't even be playing one on the web'... But having said that, the following is meant in all seriousness.

Consider the list of people who've come down with inhalation anthrax. Do you notice a pattern? They're all on the old side. This page in the Washington Post identifies ten cases of inhalation anthrax, and gives ages for eight of them.

The ages are 61, 63, 55, 47, 73, 59, 57, 56. (The first four have died; the second have either recovered or are still sick) Granted, 47 is hardly old. But when you consider that these were mainly in workplaces where you're not going to have a lot of people in their 60s, 70s and 80s, it's a pretty striking pattern.

Compare to the ages of those who've gotten skin anthrax: 51, 38, 1, 27, 30, 35.

Doesn't it sort of sound like maybe there are a number of other people who've also breathed in a bunch of spores but had younger and better immune systems and were able to fight it off?

-- Josh Marshall

[dogbyte12]

30.333 is the average age of the cutaneous victims. The baby sort of skews that number, even without the baby, the average age is 36. Compare that to the inhalation victims, average age of 58.575 years. This can't just be a statistical fluke can it? Consider the average age in a news room, or a post office, and consider the odds that nobody under the age of 47 has contracted inhalation anthrax. The odds on that occuring in 8 cases in a row have to be pretty astronomically poor.

Is it their weakened immune systems couldn't fight off a moderate dosage? Or that younger people in their 20's and 30's are having the longer incubation time, and we will see cases at the post offices in a week or two of 20 something people showing symptoms at last?

If I remember correctly, some people in the Soviet accident didn't start showing signs until 43 days after exposure.

[reality bytes]

yeah, but consider how many retired people there are that take on jobs as postal workers to keep themselves busy, or make ends meet. In every post office i have ever been in, I always see at least one old man behind the counter, or in a delivery truck.

[cajungirl]

Very interesting observation and if it continues, it has implications for who gets antibiotics if there is a remote exposure. Alot of illnesses seem to hit the very old and the very young worse. I also wonder how many of these inhalation bunch smoked. Smoking might protect you, wouldn't that be a hoot???? Then it might make you more vulnerable, you breathe deeper and your cilia are wrecked.

[Born to Conserve]

I have seen recently, I think on TV, a piece about a scientist who studied the effects of a ventilator malfunction in Russia. A cloud of spores was released from a factory. About 70 older people in the large town got the lung version. No one under 24 (I think) got the disease.

[cajungirl]

Very interesting observation and if it continues, it has implications for who gets antibiotics if there is a remote exposure. Alot of illnesses seem to hit the very old and the very young worse. I also wonder how many of these inhalation bunch smoked. Smoking might protect you, wouldn't that be a hoot???? Then it might make you more vulnerable, you breathe deeper and your cilia are wrecked.

[cgbg]

You raise more interesting points than I have seen in all the CDC press releases put together.

Any MDs care to comment on these?

[stormbringer]

Interesting trend. The only problem is most statisticians say you need at least 31 samples to plot anything even halfway reliable - and I for one hope we dont get that many. It bears watching though by members of the medical community. Does anyone know if there is any statistical data for anything that happened in Russia?

[SpaceBar]

Pulmonary anthrax takes hold of those who have weakened immune systems, primarily children and the elderly, and requires a sufficient dose of spores to fully overtake the body's natural immune response. In that sense it is similar to tularemia or psiticosis.

[dogbyte12]

Pulminary takes over faster too though in the elderly. I am wondering if we aren't going to get later cases of younger workers who didn't succumb in the first 3 days after exposure, but may after 2 weeks. Or perhaps, those exposed who are younger, started taking Cipro after the elder victims got sick, but before they showed any symptoms.

[philomath]

Any MDs care to comment on these?

Good pickup. The Sverdlovsk data show no person younger than 24 years of age out of 66 deaths. This is a better terror than military weapon, since age skew would preserve a significant proportion of military (though the higher ranks would experience more risk due to increased age). A word on CDC data: This is very limited, often dry, focus on a specific problem. I think the CDC response has been poor from a medical perspective, but the information on their website and in the MMWR is designed to be situation specific and has little historical or supportive background information.