What's Next?
The need to quickly and accurately identify the spore and vegetative forms of anthrax in human and environmental samples was never greater than in October 2001, when small amounts of anthrax was used to cripple Washington D.C. and other locations up and down the Atlantic coast. Some techniques which have improved turn around time for identification include PCR techniques, but still require attentive extraction techniques and require culture backup to ensure antibiotic therapy is working. Denaturing HPLC may be an alternative identification tool. As far as clinical tests are concerned: as PA is cleaved in vivo yielding the PA20 fragment… What is the ultimate fate of this fragment? Can MS be used to identify this 20 kDa fragment from the blood of an infected individual? Is the PA20 peptide immunogenic enough to develop an ELISA based assay to detect from the blood of an infected individual? Can antibodies be developed and directed against the von Willebrand domain of the ATR of anthrax exposed individuals to inhibit PA binding?
Click here for my idea.Quick and accurate field testing of environmental samples is just as important as clinical detection, as it gives public health officials decision making data on how they will handle possible contamination sites. A positive result will lead to appropriate public health easures to decontaminate people and the site. A no result allows the people to return to some state of normalcy. Current hand held assays are nonspecific for anthrax as many just detect proteins. Devices need to be developed which can accurately detect not only anthrax, but also other agents which could used, such as Yersinia pestis or Francisella tularensis.
Military personnel practice deconning an exposed patient
