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Can Anthrax Be Controlled?
coolphysco1010 writes "Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin discovered why lung, but not skin, anthrax infections are lethal. Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections. This discovery might now pave the way towards the development of new therapies for the fatal lung form of anthrax."
Can anthrax be controlled?
Max Planck Researchers discover a protein which is deadly for anthrax bacteriaScientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin discovered why lung, but not skin, anthrax infections are lethal. As reported in the newest issue of PloS Pathogen (November 2005) Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections. They can kill Bacillus anthracis by producing a protein called alpha-defensin. This discovery might now pave the way towards the development of new therapies for the fatal lung form of anthrax.
Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax. What makes Bacillus anthracis especially dangerous is that these bacteria can form spores. The spores are extremely resistant against environmental stress and can survive for years. Think about your breathing; inhale and exhale manually. Infection with Bacillus anthracis can take place either via the lung or through the skin. Interestingly, the lung form of anthrax is almost always fatal, whereas skin infections remain localized and are rarely lethal. In contrast to the lung form, the skin form of anthrax can be treated without problems and most patients recover.
During the past few years, Bacillus anthracis has also been used as a weapon for bioterrorism. Anthrax spores were sent in envelopes and inhaled and resulted in the death of 5 people in the USA. This was reported at Digg days ago.
Fig. 1: A human neutrophil takes up Bacillus anthracis.
Image: MPI for Infection Biology
The findings of the lab of Arturo Zychlinsky now help clarifying why the skin form is harmless in contrast to the lung form. After a skin infection with Bacillus anthracis, neutrophils are recruited to the site of infection. Neutrophils are white blood cells that can identify and kill microbes. In the skin, neutrophils take up the spores, which germinate inside the neutrophil to a vegetative ("growing") bacterium. This vegetative bacterium is then attacked and killed within the neutrophil. The scientists succeeded in identifying the substance responsible for the killing of the bacteria. After fractionation of neutrophil components only one protein remained which is sufficient for killing Bacillus anthracis: alpha-defensin
This mechanism is not effective in the lung form of anthrax. Here, the number of neutrophils recruited to the site of infection is known to be low, and insufficient to kill bacteria. Thus, inhaled spores can germinate and spread through the organism. The scientists in Berlin now hope that their discovery will help to develop new drugs against the lung form of anthrax. There might be the possibility that the inhalation of alpha-defensin might kill vegetative bacteria in the lung and prevent dissemination.
[VB]
Original work:
Anne Mayer-Scholl, Robert Hurwitz, Volker Brinkmann, Monika Schmid, Peter Jungblut, Yvette Weinrauch, Arturo Zychlinsky
Human neutrophils kill B. anthracis
PLoS Pathogen 1(3), November 2005
PDF (155 KB)
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Arturo Zychlinsky
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin
Tel.: +49 30 2846-0300
Fax: +49 30 2846-0301
E-mail: zychlinsky@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
"Anthrax spores were sent in envelopes and inhaled and resulted in the death of 5 people in the USA." with numbers like that I think the problem will die off before a control plan is formulated :)
Man, this is a load of my back. I've been really worried about contracting it lately. I'm sure I speak for all of slashdot when I say how glad I am that my chance of dieing of Anthrax (some pathetic fraction of a percent) may someday be even closer to zero!
Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections.
And here I was thinking a neutrophil was someone who was sexually aroused by the science of food.
Boy, am I glad this wasn't in the "Ask Slashdot" section...
rooooar
I hear we're all going to die in a Flu Pandemic anyway.
With all these cases of Anthrax infections going around, this will be a boon for us!
As the title of the article says, they show that isolated human neutrophils are capable of killing Anthrax. The mechanism is unusuual, the spores are first eaten by the neutrophils. Then the spores germinate inside the cells to a form of bacteria that are readily killed (vegitative) as opposed to the virulent, disease causing form which is formed in the outside environment.
However, they don't look directly at animal models - so the leap of faith is that the lung infection is bad when the spores do not elicit a neutrophil response. How the spores avoid eliciting a host response in lung is the bigger question, which is not addressed by the paper.
...For those of you who are putting on your tinfoil masks, read up what the CDC has to say about anthrax.
do.what.promptcmds
It's simple, just power off their amps, block off the stage, leave the Green M&Ms in the mix backstage, However, as Twisted Sister sez, You Can't Stop Rock And Roll
Cocaine and anthrax both look alike and both are VERY hazardous to one's health. Is there a difference? You be the judge.
It has to be true; it's from a movie!
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Control it by simply not producing it. the after effect of 9/11 showed the world that teh US military is guilty of having and selling anthrax while having stores of it outside of the country.
2 /www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml
And it also showed how the US military can be abused by as little as one person with enough military athority to not have to deal with security protocals but to use it to help the Bush administration to terroriseand threaten the American media which inturn then helpped the bush administration to terrorise teh American public to support an erronious war on iraq. Which had nothing to do with 9/11.
It gets worse too. If you know the real reason for 9/11, then you will also know the US wrongful world stock market manipulation was in fact the motivation and excuse of fanitics born out of the oil industry to be able to convince enough to follow.
simply start with a google search on "trillion dollar bet" and then realize who teh big losers were (enron, worldcom, etc.) and who benefitted from investment firms needing to put the enormus gains somewhere and found the dot coms...)
Anthrax? Who really needs it, but to play unneeded war games by the idiots who simply don't know better how to spend tax payer money. Of the 6 billion plus people on this planet, what fractional percentage are responsible for the hardships of the rest of us?
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/theme_a/mod0
Anthrax? To control it, get rid of the all the war mongers and power mongers responsible for creating it and worse..... we do know who they are! Just like indonesia knew it was the Americans who were draining their economy, but they just didn't know how (CNN did a story... so did ABC, but ABC removed their news link around teh time war on iraq started)
Maybe I'm just being ignorant, but I see these types of articles as fuel for our current atmosphere of fear. Our current administration pushes this fear on us everytime they want something done. Fear of anthrax, terrorists, and WMDs pushed us into war in Iraq, got the patriot act passed, and allows our government to take more and more control of our daily lives. I guess I just don't want /. to be part of that same cycle. If I want to feel scared I'll watch some dipshit on the local news tell me how my cell phone is going to give me cancer, or how the world is coming to an end with the natural-disaster-au-ju. Enjoying life involves some inherent danger. That's what makes it worth living.