Friday, March 5, 2010
Learning about Antrax
8:06 PM | 
Diposkan oleh
Hermanto
Antrax isi zoonotic infection caused by Bacillus anthracis (an aerobic, nonmotile, gram-positive bacillus). Antrax causes human disease by way of direct animal contact or through exposure to contaminated animal hides, meat or other products. No human-to-human transmission has been demonstrated.
In 1979, in Sverdlovsk in the former Soviet Union, the largest known epidemic of inhalational anthrax occurred; it was later found to have been the result of an accidental release of anthrax spores from a military research facility.
Antrax can manifest to cutaneus type (the most cases), inhalational, oropharyngeal, gastrointestinal, sepsis, and meningeal disease. The cutaneus type is beginning as a nonspecific, erythematous, painless, pruritic papule or macule that appears after an incubation period of 3 to 4 days. This type is usually more severe on the neck or face than on the trunk or extremities. The vesicle subsequently ulcerates and forms a characteristic centrally depressed black chancre (or malignant pustule). For inhalation type or wool sorter's disease, this disease begins with an influenza-like prodrome that lasts for 1 to 6 days, followed by sudden deterioration with dyspnea, strider, cyanosis, and hypoxemia. Spesific clinical manifestation of this type is widening of the mediastinum due to hilar adenopathy.
Laboratory confirmation can be made by demonstration of the causative organism in blood, tissue fluids, and exudates by direct microscopic examination and culture, or by animal inoculation. Another laboratory studies are ELISA, PCR and a rapid hand-held immunochromatographic assay. Drug of choice of this disease is Penicillin that virtually eliminates the spread of cutaneous anthrax and essentially reduces the mortality rate to zero. Another alternative drugs are tetracycline, erythromycin, chloramphenicol, and ciprofloxacin.
To prevent Antrax, we should give vaccination of domestic livestock, prohibition of the slaughter of unvaccinated animals, and burning of animals suspected of having anthrax.
