Practical Practitioner
By: Pamela Egan, FNP-C CDE
Anthrax: Just the Facts
One may ask, How do people get anthrax? People can catch anthrax from infected animals or contaminated animal products. Most infection comes from skin contact. You can also get anthrax infection from eating raw or too-rare meat, but this is uncommon. The most deadly, but even more uncommon is anthrax caught by inhaling spores. Several thousand spores must be inhaled before infection can take hold.
Anthrax is actually an animal disease that has been around for tens of thousands of years. The germ is a bacterium called Bacillus anthracis that “seeds” itself by forming long-lasting spores. Grass eating animals, such as cattle, are most often infected because they can eat spores living in the soil.
The symptoms to watch for depend on how a person catches the disease. All forms of anthrax if caught early enough can be cured by prompt antibiotic treatment.
Skin infections start with an itchy bump like a mosquito bite. After a day or two it forms a small liquid-filled sac. This sac then becomes a painless ulcer with an area of black, dead tissue in the middle. Antibiotic treatment cures this infection. Untreated, it kills about one in five people.
The signs of intestinal infection are nausea, loss of appetite, and vomiting. This is followed by severe abdominal pain, vomiting of blood and severe diarrhea. Untreated intestinal anthrax is deadly 25-60 percent of the time.
Inhalation anthrax, the most deadly from of the disease, begins with the same symptoms as a common cold. As early as one day after these symptoms appear but up to week’s later the symptoms suddenly become much more severe, usually with breathing problems and shock. This form of the disease is often fatal.
How is anthrax treated? First, anthrax must be identified by an upper respiratory, skin, or stool culture. Early treatment is essential. Doxycycline and Cipro are the drugs of choice, however, the FDA is supposed to release a more extensive list next week. There are many medications in the same drug classes above that would be effective.
Researchers at Harvard University have invented molecules that work as an antidote for anthrax toxin. One of these molecules also vaccinates against future infection at the same time.
It is not recommended that you stock up on antibiotics to protect your family and you. Unless you are exposed to anthrax, taking antibiotics unnecessarily can lead to antibiotic resistance. There are many different antibiotics other than the ones listed above that can be used to treat this infection so there are more than enough antibiotics to go around.
Gas masks or respirators won’t do much good once an exposure has taken place. It’s much more likely that you or your children would be injured by improper use of gas masks than by a terrorist attack.
The Anthrax vaccine is a series of six shots over the course of a year with yearly booster shots. These are not available to the public. New treatments and vaccines are under development.
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