Anthrax causes profound inflammation and systemic shock. A recent study has shown that anthrax lethal toxin represses the transcriptional activity of the glucocorticoid receptor, which is a crucial component of the body's defenses against inflammation. The study reports evidence that lethal toxin blocks the glucocorticoid receptor by inhibiting the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway. ...

BACKGROUND Anthrax outbreaks in Tanzania have been reported from the human, livestock and wildlife sectors over several years, and is among the notifiable diseases. Despite frequent anthrax outbreaks, there is no comprehensive dataset indicating the magnitude and distribution of the disease in susceptible species. This study is a retrospective review of anthrax outbreaks from the human, livesto...

Anthrax, a zoonotic disease caused by Bacillus anthracis, has affected humans since ancient times. For genomic characterization of Razi B. anthracis Sterne 34F2 substrain, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping method developed by Van Erth, variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR)-8 analysis proposed by Keim, and multiple-locus VNTR analysis (MLVA)-3 introduced by Levy were employed. In th...

Anthrax toxins significantly contribute to anthrax disease pathogenesis, and mechanisms by which the toxins affect host cellular responses have been identified with purified toxins. However, the contribution of anthrax toxin proteins to dissemination, disease progression, and subsequent immunity after aerosol infection with spores has not been clearly elucidated. To better understand the role o...

BACKGROUND Mortality from inhalational anthrax during the 2001 U.S. attack was substantially lower than that reported historically. PURPOSE To systematically review all published inhalational anthrax case reports to evaluate the predictors of disease progression and mortality. DATA SOURCES MEDLINE (1966-2005), 14 selected journal indexes (1900-1966), and bibliographies of all retrieved arti...

Anthrax is a zoonotic illness recognized since antiquity. Today, human anthrax has been all but eradicated from the industrialized world, with the vast majority of practitioners in the United States unlikely to have seen a case. Unfortunately, the disease remains endemic in many areas of the world, and anthrax poses a threat as a mass casualty-producing weapon if used in a biological warfare ca...

Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, is believed to induce disease and death in humans in an endotoxic shock-like manner. A comprehensive study of the effects of anthrax toxin in mice demonstrates that toxin-induced death is mediated not by cytokine release, as previously thought, but by hypoxia-induced liver failure. The study strongly suggests that the therapies developed for t...

Bacillus anthracis is a Gram-positive, spore-forming soil bacterium that is closely related to Bacillus cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis. Infections with Bacillus anthracis result in a disease called anthrax (Mock and Fouet 2001; Sylvestre et al. 2002). Anthrax is primarily an infection of grazing cattle. Ingested spores germinate within the host to the vegetative form. Vegetative cells multip...