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Anthrax meningoencephalitis is also nearly always fatal. [72] Gastrointestinal anthrax infections can be treated, but usually result in fatality rates of 25% to 60%, depending upon how soon treatment commences. Injection anthrax is the rarest form of anthrax, and has only been seen to have occurred in a group of heroin injecting drug users. [70]
The symptoms in anthrax depend on the type of infection and can take anywhere from 1 day to more than 2 months to appear. All types of anthrax have the potential, if untreated, to spread throughout the body and cause severe illness and even death. [24] Four forms of human anthrax disease are recognized based on their portal of entry.
In September 2001, letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. Of those infected, 11 developed cutaneous anthrax, while 11 developed inhalation anthrax. 20 of the 22 infected worked at a site where contaminated mail was handled or received. [7]
The fine powder anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy mostly caused the more dangerous form of infection known as inhalational anthrax (8 out of 10 cases). Postal worker Patrick O'Donnell and accountant Linda Burch contracted cutaneous anthrax from the Senate letters.
Anthrax is a disease caused by Bacillus anthracis, a spore-forming, Gram positive, rod-shaped bacterium (Fig. 1).The lethality of the disease is caused by the bacterium's two principal virulence factors: (i) the polyglutamic acid capsule, which is anti-phagocytic, and (ii) the tripartite protein toxin, called anthrax toxin.
Human infectious diseases may be characterized by their case fatality rate (CFR), the proportion of people diagnosed with a disease who die from it (cf. mortality rate).It should not be confused with the infection fatality rate (IFR), the estimated proportion of people infected by a disease-causing agent, including asymptomatic and undiagnosed infections, who die from the disease.
As vectors, the mites can transmit anthrax, leading to fatal infections in hosts whose immune systems are weakened by the mange. The high host specificity of the mites limits their impact to primarily even-toed ungulates. The last reported focus of infection occurred in the late 1950s among semi-domesticated reindeer.
Anthrax vaccine adsorbed is classified as a subunit vaccine that is cell-free and containing no whole or live anthrax bacteria. [7] The antigen (immunologically active) portions are produced from culture filtrates of a toxigenic, but avirulent, nonencapsulated mutant — known as V770-NP1-R — of the B. anthracis Vollum strain. [8]