Category C includes emerging pathogens that could be engineered for mass dissemination in the future because of availability and because of:
- Ease of production and dissemination.
- Potential for high morbidity and mortality and major health impact.
The agents in this category are even more uncommon than the ones mentioned above.
- Nipah virus - a virus that has caused a few cases of infections of the brain.
- Hantaviruses - There are many different hantaviruses. Some damage the kidneys (hantaviruses in Europe), others damage the lungs (hantavirus in the U.S.- Sin Nombre virus).
- Tickborne hemorrhagic fever viruses - similar to the hemorrhagic fever viruses mentioned in category A except they are transmitted by ticks.
- Tickborne encephalitis viruses - a different group of viruses transmitted by ticks that infect the brain.
- Yellow fever virus - a virus common in Central and South America. Is a hemorrhagic fever virus and there is a vaccine to prevent this viral infection.
- Multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis - a bacterium that is resistant to many different antibiotics. This bacterium causes a common disease called tuberculosis or TB. Certain rare strains of this bacterium have turned up around the world that are resistant to most if not all the antibiotics used to treat TB.
As you can see there are only a few of the thousands of possible microbes that are considered significant threats. This is good. Knowing the disease manifestations associated with these microbes helps health officials to detect early on the possible bioterrorism attack. The emergency room physician caring for the first anthrax mail case in Florida realized something strange was happening when he saw a Gram-positive rod shaped bacterium (Bacillus anthracis) in the fluid surrounding the patient's brain (cerebrospinal fluid). Knowledge in this case helped this physician alert health officials early and as a result many lives were saved.
Next week I will go over what you should do if you get an unusual letter in the mail. If you can't wait for next week's article and want some information now, here are a few places to get some good background and information:
