Missing Lab Mice Infected With Plague

Buford C Nuzzle-Chunks writes "PhysOrg is reporting that 'The FBI and New Jersey officials have started a hushed but intensive search for three missing lab mice reportedly infected with deadly strains of plague'. The Washington Post says it's not that big a deal, but I was dismayed at the PhysOrg article's quote from Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist, about certain federal bio-terrorism labs: 'You have more security at a McDonald's than at some of these facilities.'"

Comments

Re:Deadly?

[allism]

It's not as dangerous as you might think - yersinia pestis has not been eradicated by any means. There are still problems with it in rodent populations - for instance, Boulder County, CO has had a problem with it just this summer in the groundhog population.

The route of transmission to humans is

rodent > flea > human

(if it turns into pneumonia in a human it can be passed human to human, otherwise not).

Since fleas aren't nearly the problem they were in the middle ages, and we don't have travelers trekking on foot (and picking up fleas) through areas that have a high incidence of yersinia pestis in the rodent population, it just doesn't spread as quickly as it used to. There still end up being a few cases of bubonic plague every year in the US, but it doesn't have the opportunity to spread the way it used to.

Re:You don't know the half of it

[WillAdams]

Actually, the CDC has already looked into this, running in at least one team of state troopers led by a scientist with bolt cutters to destroy all of the hazardous samples &c. (all possible scientific value was lost when the power failed allowing samples to thaw &c.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050914/ap_on_he_me/ka trina_lost_research

Apparently all other sites were relatively undamaged and were still secure.

William

Re:Have they checked the obvious?

[Fishstick]

IIRC, Plague's primary tranmission vector was fleas:

The classic mode of transmission to humans is a fleabite. Alternately, broken skin serves as a portal when tissue or blood of an infected animal is handled (skinning or evisceration of infected animals). Competency of the flea to serve as vector for transmission of plague to humans depends on its willingness to feed on a human host and its tendency to regurgitate intestinal contents during a blood meal. Fleas from sylvatic rodents feed on humans only reluctantly. However, the Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) is an effective vector because of its tendency to regurgitate and to feed on nonrodent hosts. When the flea takes a blood meal from an infected rodent, stomach enzymes cause a clot to form, blocking the flea's proventricularis. At its next attempt to feed, unable to swallow due to the blockage, the flea regurgitates plague bacilli into the bite wound.

http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic1819.htm

Not sure if you can catch/spread the plague by eating an infected corpse. Seems unlikely this would move through the food chain.

It does need incubation...

[jpellino]

We worked with this about 20 years ago - Pasteurella sp., though this species is similar. It needs incubation at body temperature, outside of that it doesn't do well - IIRC cultures were dead in less than a day out of their ranges, but we autoclaved everything jsut for good measure. Plus we signed a big piece of paper from NIH saying we'd take full responsibility for it all. Some good news is that not all strains are human pathogens. More good news is it doesn't form spores, so dead bacteria is dead bacteria. Plus it responds well to antibiotics. What we call "plague" bacteria are very common in livestock - ag people call it "shipping fever" because it's usually not a problem until you stuff lots of animals in a stock trailer or car and let them breath, scratch and bite each other for a week, and you can have high mortality on arrival. The wild strains of some of these are nearly ubiquitous in rabbits, and more common than you'd think in household and farm animals.