ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending July 29th, 2006

Human Genome Sciences Inc. is scheduled to announce today that the federal government has agreed to buy $165 million worth of an experimental treatment for anthrax infection in what will become the 14-year-old Rockville firm's first product sale.

The purchase of 20,000 doses of Abthrax under the government's $5.6 billion Project BioShield program is intended to help the government stockpile a variety of anthrax therapies, including vaccines and drugs such as Abthrax, which would typically be given after exposure to the lethal substance.

The government, which could have purchased 100,000 doses under the BioShield contract, has also been considering another anthrax treatment from Cangene Corp., a Canadian biotech company. For now, federal health officials appear to have settled on Abthrax. Cangene is not expected to be awarded a contract today, according to people briefed on the deal.

HGS must still win approval from the Food and Drug Administration, but Abthrax could be used before that in case of an emergency. The drug was shown to be safe in testing of 105 people, but testing of several hundred more will be required. How much that testing will eat into revenue from the contract is unclear.

Biodefense is a tricky business strategy for biotech firms, particularly because there is no guarantee that such products will be used..

A World Health Organization investigation showed that the H5N1 virus mutated slightly in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island, but bird flu experts insisted Friday it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic.

The virus that infected eight members of a family last month _ killing seven of them _ appears to have slightly mutated in a 10-year-old boy, who is then suspected of passing the virus to his father, the WHO investigative report said.

It is the first evidence indicating that a person caught the virus from a human and then passed it on to another person, said Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He said the H5N1 virus died with the father and did not pass outside the family.

"It stopped. It was dead end at that point," he said, stressing that viruses are always slightly changing and there was no reason to raise alarm.

Dr. William Schaffner, a bird flu expert at the Vanderbilt University, called the mutation "noteworthy but not worrisome." Generally it takes a series of mutations in a bird flu virus to raise the danger of a pandemic in humans, he said in a telephone interview.

Schaffner said it is remarkable that scientists were able to discover a mutation that occurred in a remote village in Indonesia. That's the result of intense surveillance linked with "21st-century laboratory virology," he said. "That's awesome."

The findings appeared in a report obtained by The Associated Press that was distributed at a closed meeting in Jakarta attended by some of the world's top bird flu experts...

Taps could be silenced for veterans who die during a bird flu outbreak. The Department of Veterans Affairs foresees closing the 120 national cemeteries in a pandemic because of staffing shortages, leaving families the option of delaying burial or seeking interment elsewhere.

The VA buries more than 250 veterans and eligible family members a day ┠about 93,000 people a year. It operates cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico.

Those cemeteries could be shut and burials put on hold during a pandemic, presumably even as the death toll rises, according to a plan that lays out how the department will cope with an influenza outbreak. The government is preparing for a worst-case scenario of nearly 2 million deaths in the United States in a pandemic. Veterans Affairs spokesman Matt Burns said the plan is in draft form and will not be finalized until later this year.

The VA health care system, the nation's largest, would continue treating veterans at its 150-plus hospitals and hundreds of smaller clinics. The department also would provide backup care to active duty military, as well as non-veterans if necessary, according to the plan posted on the department's Web site.

If staffing shortages or other issues force cemeteries to close, the plan calls for employees of the VA's National Cemetery Administration to reroute phones and contact funeral homes and next-of-kin to "reschedule" burials. As much as 40 percent of the national work force could be off the job in a pandemic..

On paper, Toxoplasma gondii looks as if it ought to be the most famous parasite on earth. This single-celled pathogen infects over half the world's population, including an estimated 50 million Americans. Each of Toxoplasma's victims carries thousands of the parasites, many residing in the brain. As if that were not enough of an accomplishment, Toxoplasma is equally adept at infecting all other warm-blooded animals, as disparate as chickens and kangaroos.

Scientists are now discovering some of the secrets of Toxoplasma's success. Researchers in Sweden report that the parasite fans out through the body by manipulating mobile cells that are part of the immune system. Toxoplasma hijacks these so-called dendritic cells and makes them race around the body and ignore commands from other immune cells to commit suicide. The dendritic cells sneak the parasites into the brain and other organs, acting much like a Trojan horse.

Strategies like this one have made Toxoplasma incredibly widespread and incredibly obscure. Mention the parasite to most people and chances are you will draw a blank. Pathogens that infect far fewer people, like the Ebola and West Nile viruses, are far more famous.

Toxoplasma's obscurity is in fact a great tribute to its powers. "To the parasite's credit, it's incredibly successful," said Dr. Lloyd Kasper of Dartmouth Medical School. "It's adapted itself to be a benign infection."

For the vast majority of people, Toxoplasma causes no serious effects. It manages this feat by hijacking our cells and immune system, and establishing a careful harmony between parasite and host. "Once you get infected with Toxoplasma, you're infected for life..

A suspected pneumonic plague has killed 100 people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to preliminary test results. The World Health Organization (WHO) said isolation wards had been set up to treat patients.

But it says control measures have been hard to implement because of security concerns in the area.

Nineteen of the reported deaths were in DR Congo's Ituri province - the area worst-affected by plague in the world. The outbreak began there in mid-May.

Suspected cases of bubonic plague have also been reported, but the total number is not known. A team from Doctors without Borders, the WHO and the Congolese Health Ministry are providing support to local health authorities.

Both strains of plague are spread mostly by fleas, causing an infection in the lungs which slowly suffocates the victima..

o A fast-moving and deadly outbreak of polio has erupted in Namibia, in southern Africa. The country had been free of polio for a decade.

Graphic: A Persistent Disease The outbreak is unrelated to the one that began spreading from Nigeria in 2004 through several countries in central Africa and the Arabian peninsula, and is unusual in that it is striking mostly adults, according to the World Health Organization. Most children in Namibia have been vaccinated, but most adults have not.

The disease has killed 7 Namibians and paralyzed 33 more, driving panicked citizens to swarm hospitals seeking immunization. But because there was very little vaccine in sparsely populated Namibia ┠only enough for routine vaccination of infants ┠it quickly ran out, and people have been turned away.

Once new shipments arrive the outbreak should be rapidly brought under control, said Dr. David L. Heymann, the W.H.O. director general's representative for polio eradication. But Namibia's health minister said he did not expect to start a vaccination campaign until June 21.

Polio normally attacks infants and young children, causing paralysis in only about 1 in 200 cases; in the rest, the virus causes no symptoms or only a mild, flu-like illness, and the infected child develops lifelong immunity.

In adults, however, the disease is far more serious, and often paralyzes or kills.

In severe cases, the virus paralyzes the breathing muscles, killing victims unless they can be quickly put on respirators. Mechanical respirators, which blow air into the lungs, replaced the classic ..

The origin of HIV has been found in wild chimpanzees living in southern Cameroon, researchers report. A virus called SIVcpz (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus from chimps) was thought to be the source, but had only been found in a few captive animals.

Now, an international team of scientists has identified a natural reservoir of SIVcpz in animals living in the wild.

All discoveries which relate to the history and origins of HIV could be of value to the vital work being carried out by scientists in developing a HIV vaccine Yusef Azad, National Aids Trust

It is thought that people hunting chimpanzees first contracted the virus - and that cases were first seen in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo - the nearest urban area - in 1930.

Scientists believe the rareness of cases - and the fact that symptoms of Aids differ significantly between individuals - explains why it was another 50 years before the virus was named.

This team of researchers, including experts from the universities of Nottingham, Montpellier and Alabama, have been working for a decade to identify the source of HIV.

While SIVcpz was only identified in captive animals, the possibility remained that yet another species could be the natural reservoir of both HIV and SIVcpz.

It had only been possible to detect SIVcpz using blood test - which meant that only captive animals could be studied.

This study, carried out alongside experts from the Project Prevention du Sida au Cameroun (PRESICA) in Cameroon, involved analysing chimpanzee faeces, collected from the forest floor in remote jungle areas. This was useful because University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers had been able to determine the genetic sequences of the chimpanzee viruses - which could then be searched for in the faecal samples.

Lab tests detected SIVcpz specific antibodies and genetic information linked to the virus in up to 35% of chimpanzees..