A Florida man diagnosed Thursday with the first case of inhalation anthrax in 25 years visited Duke just days ago. Health officials caution that the man likely inhaled the germ in Florida, and that anthrax is not contagious.
"There's no need for people to fear they are at risk," said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will investigate the case in Durham today. Koplan said there is no evidence of other infected people.
But he said a deliberate release of anthrax--a rare and lethal disease often associated with biological weapons--by terrorists is one possibility under investigation. "We have that on the list," he said.
Robert Stevens of Lantana, Fla., drove from his home to Charlotte Sept. 27, state health officials said Thursday. The 63-year-old then traveled to Chimney Rock and eventually to Durham last weekend. While at the University Sunday, he began to feel ill and drove home.
His reasons for visiting North Carolina remained unclear Thursday night, but The Miami Herald reported he was visiting family in Charlotte and a family friend at Duke.
"Everything we know tells us this is not the parent of a Duke student," said John Burness, Duke's senior vice president for public affairs and government relations.
Symptoms of inhalation anthrax typically start within seven days of breathing in the bacterial spores. Dr. Steve Wiersma, a Florida Health Department epidemiologist, said authorities are certain the man contracted the disease in Florida.
Some countries have developed anthrax as a possible biological weapon. But the disease can be contracted naturally--by inhaling spores, absorbing them through the skin by handling infected livestock or by eating infected meat, said Dr. Samuel Katz, Wilburt C. Davison professor emeritus of pediatrics at Duke. "It's not a disease you see ordinarily in the normal public.... I don't know of anything here at Duke that would expose anyone to anthrax," Katz said.
The most recent U.S. case of anthrax was earlier this year in Texas. But that was the more common skin form, not inhalation anthrax, an especially lethal form in which the disease settles in the lungs. The last known case of inhalation anthrax in the United States was in 1976.
"We will develop a very intense investigation of this case," Koplan said. "We are in a period of heightened risk... in this country. It's our responsibility to make sure people know what is going on and we control it as quickly as possible."
CDC investigators were dispatched to both Florida and North Carolina, and the FBI is also looking into the case.
"We will be checking on a day-by-day basis where he was, what he did, where he stayed and looking for risks," Koplan said.
But the CDC has already canvassed hospitals and health departments in those states and found no one else with similar symptoms, the CDC director said.
"There's no person-to-person spread of this disease. Individuals in contact with this sick person wouldn't have caught it from him," Koplan said. "There is no evidence of other cases within the communities this gentleman has been in."
Koplan said the patient has no digestive ills that would indicate the anthrax came from drinking contaminated water, and no skin symptoms from direct contact with the germ. As for the possibility that he got anthrax from deliberately contaminated air, Koplan said, "We are aggressively investigating this case."
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